Carroll Quigley

Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.

This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.

There were people who said the Society of Cincinnati in the American revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights, was a branch of the Illuminati.

Once again the mastermind was Lionel Curtis, and the earlier Round Table Groups and Institutes of International Affairs were used as nuclei for the new network.

Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs.

In this Western point of view, evil and sin were negative qualities they arose from the absence of good, not from the presence of evil.

In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so.

In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.

Hitler's economic revolution in Germany had reduced financial considerations to a point where they played no role in economic or political decisions.

Bolshevism presented itself as an economic threat to themselves at the same time that Nazism presented itself as a political threat to their countries.

Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either.

By the winter of 1945-1946, the Russian peoples were being warned of the dangers from the West.

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.

When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue.

The supply of money in a single country was subject to no centralized, responsible control in most countries over recent centuries.

It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West.

When the business interests... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally.

The bankers made loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation.

It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.

The traditional Christian attitude toward human personality was that human nature was essentially good and that it was formed and modified by social pressures and training.

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.

The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain.

To this day the Arab influence is evident in southern Italy, northern Africa and, above all, in Spain.

The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.

More important than the Milner Group's ability to influence opinion in the Dominions was its ability to influence decisions in London.