BOOK NO. 559*2 W74o ACCESSION 505557 ' VISCOUNT HALIFAX Pictures, Iuc. . . . who once answered to the name of the Hon. Fred¬ erick Edward Lindley Wood, and later to the name of Lord Erwin of Kirby Underdale, Viceroy of India. THE FAMILIES THAT RULE THE EMPIRE By GISELHER WIRSING With a preface by GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK 3 SC FLANDERS HALL : Publishers SCOTCH PLAINS, NEW JERSEY Copyright, 1941 by FLANDERS HALL \^l+cr- PUBLISHER’S NOTE •» Any opinions expressed in this hook are the opinions of the author, the editor, or the authorities quoted. They are not necessarily those of Flanders Hall. 3 1223 01637 9639 Printed in the United States of America Acknowledgment The author is indebted for valuable data, for the charts that appear on pages 25, 57, 60-61, 70-71, 82, and 86-87, as well as for the large table inserted herein, to Smith & Durrell, Inc., formerly Harrison-Hilton Books, publishers of England’s Money Lords , the American edition of Simon Haxey’s Tory M. P. * * Contents On Aid to Britain i% i. Prelude : Forty Years Ago 13 ii. The House of Commons : Control Tower of Capitalism 19 hi. Three Armament Firms Produce Three Prime Ministers 29 iv. The Bankers : The Real Rulers of Britain 47 v. “Jobs for Pals” 55 vi. The Spoils of the Empire 73 vii. Parliament : A Family Matter 89 viii. Honi soit qui mal y pense 103 ix. The Have-nots and the Plutocrats 111 vii On Aid cTo Britain Sixty families, according to Ferdinand Lnndberg, rule America; they make and unmake presidents, senators, wars and treaties. Dr. Charles A. Beard hails this book as “a magnificent introduction into our plutocracy”. Walter Millis calls it “a really important contribution to an understanding of our times”. No less important are two studies of the invisible government of the British Empire. Great Britain, contend Simon Haxey and Giselher Wirsing, is the private domain of one hundred families. Haxey’s book, England’s Money Lords, recognized as “political dynamite” in England, was practically ignored in the United States. For some obscure reason, renegade Americans, who are eager to rescind the Declaration of Independence and who attempt to substitute Benedict Arnold for George Washington as our national hero, are more sen¬ sitive to any criticism of England than are our British “cousins”. A British critic, writing for The New Statesman and Nation, calls Haxey’s book “indispensa¬ ble to 'the student of Democracy”. Reynold’s News characterizes the accumulation of facts presented in Haxey’s book as “terrific”. “Never before has there been such a devastating demonstration in terms of arithmetic of the extent to which the fate of the vast majority of common people in this country [England] is held by a tiny group controlling Cabinet, Commons, and Lords”. Unfortunately, Haxey’s book, though pub- IX Preface x lished in the United States, is not at this writing avail¬ able in an inexpensive edition. For that reason the student of history and sociology should welcome all the more the publication at a price within any man’s reach of The One Hundred Families that Rule the Empire, Dr. Wirsing ’s penetrating study of the British oligarchy. Dr. Wirsing is an eminent au¬ thority on international affairs and a brilliant econo¬ mist. These qualifications aid him in editing the Miinchner Neueste N achrichten and his own highly in¬ tellectual magazine, Die Tat. They also stand him in good stead when he interprets the rule of corruption and nepotism under the guise of Democracy in Great Brit¬ ain. Wirsing relies to some extent upon the data laboriously collected by Haxey, because the evidence of¬ fered would be suspected if it came from other than Brit¬ ish sources. But he brings his own inimitable analytical gifts to bear upon the material. It is not necessary to agree with every detail of Wirsing ’s interpretation. It is not necessary, on the other hand, to disagree with him even if one admires British civilization and favors “aid to Great Britain.” No one who studies Wirsing ’s arguments and facts can deny that an interlocking directorate entrenched in Par¬ liament and high finance, exploits the resources of the British Empire solely for its own selfish purposes. America’s Sixty Families may wish to aid the Hundred Families who manipulate the policies and the purse¬ strings of Britain, but the American people at large are not interested in swelling the dividends of British Cabi¬ net members from implements of murder, nor in saving Preface xi a second time the octopus of Threadneedle Street, whose golden tentacles encircle the globe. It is possible to appreciate the England of Shake¬ speare without paying homage to the England of Churchill. One may admire the Magna Charta (al¬ though it was wrung from the British Monarch by feudal Lords to perpetuate their own vested interests) without accepting the way of life or the system which is responsible for slums at home and aggression abroad. For England, to quote Senator Gerald P. Nye, “is the most aggressive of aggressors.’ ’ The aid which we are rendering to Great Britain is rendered to the British people, not to British imperialism. If British imperial¬ ism survives this war at home or abroad, our illusions may be shattered even more dismally than they were a generation ago, when Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points one by one dropped under the conference table. America, in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, champions freedom — “everywhere”/ If we accept this solemn assurance, we must apply the President’s dictum to England, Ireland, India, South Africa and every country in the one-quarter of the habitable world pre¬ empted by the Money Lords of Great Britain. There can be no freedom while the “Mother of Parliaments” is hag-ridden by a few families welded together by ties of gold and blood. There can be no New Order in Eng¬ land, nor in any quarter of the globe ruthlessly exploit¬ ed by England’s Money Lords, until the mask of De¬ mocracy is torn from the ruling clique who are running the Empire for their own pockets. The British Empire Preface xii is the greatest graft on earth, the juiciest melon that was ever cut. Before we sponsor “union now,” or at any time, let us consider the facts so pitilessly exposed in Dr. Wirs- ing’s astonishing volume. It is a book that should be read with meticulous care by all genuine friends of Great Britain. If it helps Great Britain to free herself from the grasp of her exploiters, Wirsing’s One Hun¬ dred Families will bring more vital and more valuable “aid to Great Britain” than all our dollars and bombers. George Sylvester Viereck. Prelude: Forty Years Ago A.D. 1900 — The Boer War had already reached its tragic climax. By a simple declaration on the part of the British Government the Transvaal had been incor¬ porated into the British Empire. The “Khaki Elec¬ tions” had brought Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, the desired success. In November of that memorable year, Punch published a caricature entitled “The more the Empire expands, the more the Chamberlains contract”. This was the prelude to the greatest storms that ever raged in the dark and draughty hall called the British House of Commons. On December 10, 1900, the Hon. Member for Carnar¬ von Borough, a young hot-blooded barrister with a shock of black hair, rose to his feet to disclose to the House something that was to shake the British social structure to its foundations. This young M. P. from Wales, whose name was David Lloyd George, was an al¬ most unknown factor in the political world at that time. What he had to say was the following : * As far as he had been able to ascertain, the Bight Hon. gentleman, Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colo¬ nies, as well as the Hon. Member for East Worcester¬ shire, his son, Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, were shareholders in three companies * Parliamentary Debates: Vol. 88, 1900, p. 397. 13 14 The 100 Families That Rule The Empire which had amassed huge profits from Government con¬ tracts in armaments during the Boer War by, cutting out all other competitors, the so-called “ Government Con¬ tractors”. The first of these companies was known as Hoskins & Sons, Ltd. Lloyd George informed the House that this firm, which worked solely on Admiralty contracts, was almost entirely owned by the Chamberlain family. The second firm was The Birmingham Trust in which the family of the Secretary of State for the Colonies had in¬ vested £67,000. The Birmingham Trust was a holding company incorporating two other armament factories, namely, Tubes Limited and Elliott’s Metal Company. Tubes Ltd. was owned by Arthur Chamberlain, brother of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who held 74,800 shares in this concern. Neville Chamberlain, second son of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, was the managing director of Elliott’s Metal Company. These two companies, purely armament factories, had, as Lloyd George showed, made substantial profits in years past by very favorable contracts with the Ad¬ miralty. As far as Elliott’s Metal Co. was concerned, Lloyd George pointed out that the Chamberlain family held shares totaling £121,000 in this company which had received a large number of orders to equip the docks of Her Majesty’s Navy. It was true, Lloyd George con¬ cluded, that the Secretary of State for the Colonies had ceded his share of the holdings to his son, Neville Cham¬ berlain, three years previously. Excitement in the House reached its zenith after these