G.K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' on the Jews

As I recently covered in relation to the famous Catholic writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton's 'Father Brown' series of novels: Chesterton took a severe disliking to jews and regarded them as a dangerous, subversive and usurious element within European civilization. (1)

I would like to briefly expand that analysis to another one of his famous novels: 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', which has been the subject of much comment and many adaptations over the years.

In it we find the following passage:

'“Do you think England is so little as all that?” said Fisher, with a warmth in his cold voice, “that it can't hold a man across a few thousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with and that mustn't go as well, no, by God!

It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's no earthly English interest to serve, and all hell beating up against us, simply because Nosey Zimmern has lent money to half the Cabinet. It's bad enough that an old pawnbroker from Baghdad should make us fight his battles; we can't fight with our right hand cut off.”' (2)

Chesterton then continues in the same vein shortly afterwards:

'But if you think I am going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, like the bottomless well, down into the blackness of the bottomless pit, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry – no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, not if Woodville and Carstairs had shares in twenty swindling mines.' (3)

Now in the above two excerpts we can see that the two main characters (who are brothers incidentally) are describing their predicament in their having been forced into seclusion on an island because they have angered a powerful jew named Nosey Zimmern.

Zimmern has half the British cabinet in his control, because they owe him money and thus they will jump to his command.

Zimmern's interests are not those of Britain and indeed he hails from Baghdad, which Chesterton is using - as he did Cairo's famous Café Riche in the 'Father Brown' novels - to emphasize the alien nature of the jews to Europe and also associate this alien nature with Zimmern not working in British interests since he is not British.

Further Chesterton also offers us alternative scenarios in relation to the exercise of jewish power similar to Zimmern's in that jews 'who have sucked Britain dry' are blackmailing the Chancellor of the Exchequer with their wealth, while the other method common to the exercise of this jewish power is to marry jewesses to powerful well-connected families and thus - moved by the needs of marital fidelity - they are placed in the pocket of the jews.

Chesterton elaborates just who in the British establishment these jewesses target later on the novel when he writes:

'Hawker, the old squire, had been a loose, unsatisfactory sort of person, had been on bad terms with his first wife (who died, as some said, of neglect), and had then married a flashy South American Jewess with a fortune.' (4)

Clarifying a few pages later that:

'Squire Hawker played both the bigamist and the bandit. His first wife was not dead when he married the Jewess; she was imprisoned on this island.' (5)

In these passages we can see that Chesterton is arguing that it is the profligate elements of the British aristocracy and gentry that the jewish families are targeting for marital unions and while these husbands aren't suitable to be husbands.

Their name and social position makes the sacrifice worth it: in order to gain entrée into high society and thus 'arrive' in the social sense giving them more influence with the governmental powers that be through said social connections.

The attraction for the profligate aristocracy and gentry is in the large dowry and inheritance these jewesses come with thusoffering them rescue from their creditors for life.

Thus the arrangement is two fold: the jews get social connections and influence, while the aristocrat/squire gets money.

In other words Chesterton here - like in his 'Father Brown' novels - is asserting that the jews are bribing their way into power in the British Empire via loaning money at interest to those in power and marrying their daughters to penurious members of the upper classes.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/gk-chestertons-father-brown-and-the

(2) Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1922, 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', 1 Edition, Harper: New York, p. 66

(3) Ibid., p. 67

(4) Ibid., p. 112

(5) Ibid., p. 126