In an 1899 essay, Cuza wrote that the Jews were "instinctively" working for Romania's destruction, by which Cuza meant that evil was embedded within the genes of the Jews, and that because of these alleged genetic reasons the Jews would not stop trying to destroy Romania. A recurring theme of Cuza's writings was that the Jews had been collectively working to ruin Christian nations, especially Romania because of what Cuza believed to be a Jewish "genetic code". With Xenopol and Iorga He decided to start his own movement, one centered on the rejection of Jews from public life. His first attempt saw him joining forces with historian A. D. Xenopol, creating Liga contra alcoolismului ("The League Against Alcoholism") and its magazine, Biblioteca Ligii contra alcoolismului. The scope of this movement went well beyond fighting addiction: Cuza and Xenopol saw the root of this social evil with Jewish entrepreneurs of the rural sphere. The League claimed that Jews were encouraging Romanian peasants to drink, in order to ensure a captive market, and even to benefit from their very ruin (by having them sign off assets in order to feed their habit). The prejudice had acquired a tradition by the turn of the century – however, such attitudes ignored the fact that few other employments were left open for Jews, who were awarded full citizenship only after 1923. In 1901, Cuza became a professor at the University of Iași. Since his previous initiative had died out, he associated with Nicolae Iorga: after a period of publishing articles in the latter's Neamul Românesc, he joined Iorga in the creation of the Democratic Nationalist Party (1910). In 1912, he became the editor of the Party official voice, the Unirea newspaper. Cuza showed himself in favor of replacing the restrictive framework of the Romanian state by adopting universal male suffrage, and proposed a land reform – in which he saw an end to leasehold estates, of which Jews would have taken an undeserved profit. The latter goal brought Cuza into an alliance with General Alexandru Averescu's People's League, a populist movement of immense, albeit brief popularity (he himself wrote down the League's founding document). Prominence He broke off with Iorga and founded the more radical National Christian Union in 1922 (the new Party found inspiration in Fascism and the Blackshirts, but was not paramilitary itself). It used the swastika as its symbol – one already