At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this system had to be greatly extended. Once again the task was entrusted to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front or

{p. 952} ganization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J. P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group. The American organizers were dominated by the large number of Morgan "experts," including Lamont and Beer, who had gone to the Paris Peace Conference and there became close friends with the similar group of English "experts" which had been recruited by the Milner group. In fact, the original plans for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations were drawn up at Paris. The Council of the RIIA (which, by Curtis's energy came to be housed in Chatham House, across St. James's Square from the Astors, and was soon known by the name of this headquarters) and the board of the Council on Foreign Relations have carried ever since the marks of their origin. Until 1960 the council at Chatham House was dominated by the dwindling group of Milner's associates, while the paid staff members were largely the agents of Lionel Curtis. The Round Table for years (until 1961) was edited from the back door of Chatham House grounds in Ormond Yard, and its telephone came through the Chatham House switchboard.

The New York branch was dominated by the associates of the Morgan Bank. For example, in 1928 the Council on Foreign Relations had John W. Davis as president, Paul Cravath as vice-president, and a council of thirteen others, which included Owen D. Young, Russell C. Leffingwell, Norman Davis, Allen Dulles, George W. Wickersham, Frank L. Polk, Whitney Shepardson, Isaiah Bowman, Stephen P. Duggan, and Otto Kahn. Throughout its history the council has been associated with the American Round Tablers, such as Beer, Lippmann, Shepardson, and Jerome Greene.

The academic figures have been those linked to Morgan, such as James T. Shotwell, Charles Seymour, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Philip Jessup, Isaiah Bowman and, more recently, Philip Moseley, Grayson L. Kirk, and Henry M. Wriston. The Wall Street contacts with these were created originally from Morgan's influence in handling large academic endowments. In the case of the largest of these endowments, that at Harvard, the influence was usually exercised indirectly through "State Street," Boston, which, for much of the twentieth century, came through the Boston banker Thomas Nelson Perkins.

Closely allied with this Morgan influence were a small group of Wall Street law firms, whose chief figures were Elihu Root, John W. Davis, Paul D. Cravath, Russell Leffingwell, the Dulles brothers and, rnore recently, Arthur H. Dean, Philip D. Reed, and John J. McCloy. Other nonle~al agents of llorgan included men like Owen D. Young and Norman H. Davis.

{p. 953} 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. In England the center was the Round Table Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company or its local branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Some rather incidental examples of the operations of this structure are very revealing, just because they are incidental. For example, it set up in Princeton a reasonable copy of the Round Table Group's chief Oxford headquarters, All Souls College. This copy, called the Institute for Advanced Study {ed. comment: the Australian National University in Canberra also has an Institute for Advanced Study. It's the leading research institute in Australia, and is staffed by Far Left academics in the Humanities, and by Economic Rationalists}, and best known, perhaps, as the refuge of Einstein, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, and George F. Kennan, was organized by Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller's General Education Board after he had experienced the delights of All Souls while serving as Rhodes Memorial Lecturer at Oxford. The plans were largely drawn by Tom Jones, one of the Round Table's most active intriguers and foundation administrators.

The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the The Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript). In fact, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor was the chief American correspondent (anonymously) of The Round Table, and Lord Lothian, the original editor of The Round Table and later secretary of the Rhodes Trust (1925-1939) and ambassador to Washington, was a frequent writer in the Monitor. It might be mentioned that the existence of this Wall Street, Anglo-American axis is quite obvious once it is pointed out. It is reflected in the fact that such Wall Street luminaries as John W. Davis, Lewis Douglas, Jock Whitney, and Douglas Dillon were appointed to be American ambassadors in London."
~Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

The American people themselves should not be blamed for not being engaged citizens. Being engaged citizens is logically irrational anyway.

I completely disagree. Thinking like that is what's gotten the US into this horrible mess in the first place. It isn't "irrational" to get involved in your country's governance; its the most rational thing in the world. What could be of more value to an individual than to have some part in the process of ensuring that he or she plays an active role in the voting process, and thus has some hand in bringing responsible persons into power. There is no more basic duty as a citizen of a given country. If people aren't concerned about this, then they'll get the government they deserve -- and it won't be the one they want.

Americans don't get involved because of a sort of national hubris that says that no matter who's in power, our 'democracy' is so strong that things will just carry on the way they always have. As we can see now, this is hugely incorrect assumption that has engendered truly tragic results.

Other countries have citizens that are much more involved in the voting process. Witness the voter turnout in the world - country by country. The top 30 all enjoy over 80 percent turnout... while the US, at #139 is at 48.3 percent.

In short, contrary to your statements Americans are to blame for not getting involved in the voting process. If people from other countries can do it, there's absolutely no reason why high voter turnout shouldn't happen here. If it did, there would be hundreds of thousands of less casualties all around the world, and America would be much less hated.

Peakniks who understand very well the type of deliberate obfuscation the media and politicians have engaged in to hide the realities of peak oil should recognize that this level of deception is the rule, not the exception.

AC, thanks for posting the excerpts from Tragedy and Hope, maybe it will open a few eyes.

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BTW, an interesting book on the history of the Fed Reserve is The Creature From Jekyll Island.

There are a lot good articles and books on the CFR, Roundtable, and Trilateralists - all well researched by historians and political scientists.  The leaders and active particants of such groups are not obscure academics, they are very much entrenched in our political systems and include the likes of Rockefeller, Brzezinski, Kissinger, Carter, Clinton, Cheney, presidential cabinet members, senators, etc.