Jews

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Jewish family has most efficiently exploited these gifts of their race in modern times? The House of Rothschild comes instantly to mind. One Amschel Moses, a peddler so obscure that he did not know his own surname, set up a shop in Jew Street, Frankfort, two centuries ago, with a rothes schild (red shield) over the door. From that advertisement the House of Rothschild takes its name. Today it stands for a family with, some say, two billion dollars in worldly goods, great banking houses in London, Vienna, Paris and the motto: Servare Modum, Finemque Tenere ("Be moderate, and never lose sight the goal.")

A son of hawker Amschel Moses, one Maier Amschel Rothschild, barely escaped becoming a rabbi, entered instead the Oppenheimer Bank of Hanover, laboriously worked his way from clerkship to partnerhood, won the notice of Prince Wilhelm I of Hesse by his skill at chess, became the Prince's banker, begot ten children, swore his five sons upon his deathbed to carry on his business with absolute loyalty to each other and to the House of Rothschild.

Prior to this so Jewish deathbed scene the five sons were already dispersed about Europe, leading the various branches of the House. "My father," wrote Nathan Rothschild, "once sent to me in England £600,000 in a single packet by post ($2,916,000)." So long as their mother Frau Gudula Rothschild lived, the five sons came from the ends of Europe to discuss with her and with one another every large transaction. They met in the very house with the rothes schild—but, shrewd, they had it painted green to stop the puns of passersby. . . .

Once a distracted Frankfort woman came moaning to the aged Frau Rothschild, sobbed: "They say that war is breaking out. They will take my only son." A smile compassionate yet proud twitched the lips of Frau Rothschild: "Ach! Do not be afraid. . . . There will be no war. . . . My sons will not provide the money for it this time. ..." She died at 94 in the house with the green shield, in Jew Street. "Here," she used to say, "I have seen my sons grow rich and powerful, and I will leave them their prosperity, for they would certainly lose it if I were to give way to pride and quit my humble home."

Actually, in the words of the late Baron Albert Rothschild of Vienna, "The House of Rothschild is so rich that it cannot do bad business." It has done hundreds of times such "business" as to take over securities at 100, send them to 130 by the sheer weight of the Rothschild name, sell out next day at a profit of 30, then depress the securities to 70 by announcing the securities had been abandoned by the Rothschilds, and finally buy them back with a total profit of 60% on the whole manipulation.

Today, though many of the Rothschilds still play the game at which they cannot lose, there are some members of the family who have turned from gold to other interests. Most prominent of these is Baron Henri de Rothschild, M. D., of Paris. He considers himself a physician, an author a sportsman—forgets the golden touch of Jewry except when he flings down a million francs here, or 40 million there in philanthropy.

*"Coward" is derived from Old French roots meaning "short-tailed," from the analogy of the timid short-tailed rabbit and the dog which makes its tail less prominent in fear.