There is a curious fact to be noted in connection with the persecution and consequent wanderings of the Jews about Europe and that is: wherever they wandered, the center of business seemed to go with them. When the Jews were free in Spain, there was the world's gold center. When Spain drove out the Jews, Spain lost financial leadership and has never regained it. Students of the economic history of Europe have always been puzzled to discover why the center of trade should have shifted from Spain, Portugal and Italy, up to the northern countries of Holland, Germany, and England. They have sought for the cause in many things, but none has proved completely explanatory. When, however, it is known that the change was coincident with the expulsion of the Jews from the South and their flight to the North, when it is known that upon the Jews' arrival the northern countries began a commercial life which has flourished until our day, the explanation does not seem difficult. Time and again it has proved to be the fact that when the Jews were forced to move, the center of the world's precious metals moved with them. This distribution of the Jews over Europe and the world, each Jewish community linked in a fellowship of blood, faith and suffering with every other group, made it possible for the Jew to be international in the sense that no other race or group of merchants could be at that time. Not only were they everywhere (Americans and Russians are everywhere, too) but they were in touch. They were organized before the days of conscious international commercial organizations, they were bound together by the sinews of a common life. It was observed by many writers in the Middle Ages that the Jews knew more of what was transpiring in Europe than the governments did. They also had better knowledge of what was likely to occur. They knew more about conditions than the statesmen did. This information they imparted by letter from group to group, country to country. Indeed, they may be said thus to have originated unconsciously the financial news-letter. Certainly the information they were able to obtain and thus distribute was invaluable to them in their speculative enterprises. Advance knowledge was an immense advantage in the days when news was scarce, slow and unreliable. This enabled Jewish financiers to become the agents of national loans, a form of business which they encouraged wherever possible. The Jew has always desired to have nations for his customers. National loans were facilitated by the presence of members of the same family of financiers in various countries, thus making an interlocking directorate by which king could be played against king, government against government, and the shrewdest use made of national prejudices and fears, all to the no small profit of the fiscal agent.