Commerce and Labor. Beneath this official group was an advisory commission, of seven men, three of whom were Jews; one of these Jews was Mr. Baruch. Beneath this advisory commission were scores and hundreds of men, and many committees. One of the groups subordinate to the two groups just mentioned was the War Industries Board, of which Mr. Baruch was originally merely a member, Daniel Willard being the chairman.
Now, it was this War Industries Board which become the “whole thing” later on, and it was Mr. Baruch who became the “whole thing” in that board. The place where he was put became the corner stone; he became the chief pillar of the war administration. The records show it; he himself admits it.
What influence reached into this Council of hundreds of Americans and chose a single Jew to be their undoubted lord and master for the duration of the war? Was it Baruch’s brains that elevated him? Or was it the suggestion of Jewish finance already well forward in its work of mobilization?
There is no desire to minimize the Baruch brain. Brains and money are the Jews’ two greatest weapons. No Jew is picked for a key place who has not brains. Baruch has brains. He is a ceaseless wonder among men who know him. He can do six things at once and control the most colossal operations without fuss or fever. He has both brains and money.
But there is something for Jewry to learn: brains and money are not enough. There is another element which even brains cannot cope with, and which renders money cheap. The chess-playing expert may mystify and compel admiration; but the chess-player does not rule the world.
So, Baruch did things. But Trotsky also has done things. The point is this: Are people to be carried away by an appeal deliberately made to their imagination, or are they to scrutinize what has been done, and weigh its consequences?
The Jews could do greater things in the United States than even Barauch has done, if the opportunity offered, acts of superb ease and mastery—but what would it signify? The ideal of a dictator of the United States has never been absent from the group
