at 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue, a central point with park surroundings
and no nearby residences, from 9:30 until 10:30 in the morning; then the
public meeting at the same place, surrounding the new memorial of the
Grand Army of the Republic and its founder, Dr. Stephenson, where Senator
Owen, of Oklahoma, made an oration, the Declaration of Independence was
read, the “Star Spangled Banner” and “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” were
sung, and the school children sang other patriotic songs, and the United
States Marine Band volunteered and gave music. After this there was
another display of daylight fireworks. At least 5,000 people, chiefly in
family groups, attended the meeting and saw these fireworks exhibitions,
and the children were delighted with the shows new to Washington. At
half past two in the afternoon on the great ellipse south of the White
House, at least 10,000 men, women and children listened to a band concert
and watched another hour’s exhibition of the daylight fireworks, the
grown-ups enjoying, as much as the children, the flags, balloons, paper
animals, birds and fishes, liberated by the bombs high in air. Later
in the afternoon a fine parade of automobiles decorated with flags and
flowers, and arranged by the _Washington Post_, and for which it gave
most of the prizes, passed up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, crowded by
spectators, and around the Capitol and White House and down to Potomac
Park where the judges awarded the prizes. In the evening there was
an elaborate display of fireworks on the ellipse south of the White
House, followed by a beautiful illumination of Pennsylvania Avenue. The
newspapers estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people saw these
night exhibitions. Never was there a more cheerful or good-tempered
crowd. Apparently the young and old thoroughly enjoyed the whole day
which had a picnic character for most of them. Several of the suburban
communities organized their own fireworks exhibitions and some had public
meetings as well.
The experience of the day suggested additions and improvements for
the celebration of the next Independence Day. Historical pageants, a
regatta, more field sports, more band concerts, and a wider distribution
of the celebration points are among the things suggested for next
year. The Joint Committee on Arrangements has already taken steps to
provide a permanent organization to prepare for future celebrations,
the Commissioners having announced at once that there will be no repeal
or amendment of the regulation prohibiting the old barbaric methods
of celebrating the day. The new order of things met the approval of
President Taft who, upon being told by the Chairman of the Joint
Committee, the plans for the celebration, wrote the following letter,
which was read at the public meeting:
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, July 3, 1909.
_My Dear Mr. Macfarland_:
I have your letter of July 1st with respect to the celebration
of the Fourth of July. I am very sorry that I shall not be in
the city on that day because of a previous engagement; but I am
heartily in sympathy with the movement to rid the celebration
of our country’s natal day of those distressing accidents that
might be avoided and are merely due to a recklessness against
which the public protest cannot be too emphatic.
Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) WM. H. TAFT.
Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland,
Commissioner of the District of Columbia.
This letter, sent out by the Press Association with a brief account
of the celebration, must have helped the cause of the “safe and sane”
celebration of Independence Day everywhere.
NEW FOURTHS FOR OLD
BY MRS. ISAAC L. RICE
“When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate
voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude ...
with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous
eruption of conceit and voluble with convulsive hiccough of
self-satisfaction.... It is pitiful to have dim conceptions
of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions
like these of mirth.”—_John Ruskin._
When the preparations for the celebration of a great anniversary are
identical with those for a battle, it is time to pause and reflect
whether a better observance of the day might not be advisable—to ask
ourselves whether one might not be planned which would honor and not
dishonor a glorious memory.
When Physicians, Boards of Health and Hospital Superintendents annually
prepare for the reception and treatment of hundreds, or rather thousands,
who will—before the close of the day—be brought in torn, burned, blinded;
when undertakers prepare for the hideous aftermath of our National
Birthday; when hundreds of thousands of the sick look forward with dread
to the recurrence of this season of noise, which to them brings so much
distress; when fathers and mothers all over the country shudder at the
thought of what the Fourth may bring to their dear ones, I believe
that one is justified in characterizing as a national disgrace that
pseudo-patriotism which is responsible for so much agony.
It is impossible to exaggerate the stigma of shame incurred by the
intelligent, adult proportion of the population in deliberately and
scientifically preparing for the massacre and maiming of the youthful,
ignorant and heedless members of the community. One city, for instance,
added twenty-six surgeons to its ambulance corps, while another engaged
twelve distributors of tetanus antitoxin, had field dressing stations
prepared by its National Volunteer Emergency Service and sent around
fifteen hundred vials of antitoxin serum to its hospitals. And thus many
cities anticipated the return of their Day of Carnage, preparing to bind
wounds and lacking the courage required to insist on the passage of
drastic prohibitive ordinances which would have rendered impossible the
shedding of blood.
I am sure that the thanks of all are due to one of our medical
publications which, for years past, has compiled statistics upon
statistics, based upon the price that we pay for our present-day mad
celebration of the Fourth, for without the splendid work of the _Journal
of the American Medical Association_ we should be unable to estimate the
cost of our annual holiday. As for the figures, so laboriously compiled,
they are simply amazing. To think of fifteen hundred and thirty-one
deaths and thirty-three thousand and seventy-three accidents, the fearful
sacrifice voluntarily offered by us, within the last seven years, to
our false ideals! And yet these tables, shocking as they are, give so
inadequate an idea of the suffering involved! For of these fifteen
hundred and thirty-one deaths, practically none came painlessly, almost
all being accompanied by the convulsions of tetanus, the torments of
fire, or the shock of injuries which changed healthy, happy children into
shapeless, agonizing horrors. While as for the thirty-three thousand and
seventy-three who were injured, but not fatally, how many are dragging
out their wretched lives, blind, maimed or crippled!
What, perhaps, is the saddest feature, is the fact that almost all
the victims of the Fourth are children, whose youth and ignorance and
inexperience and helplessness would certainly seem to merit all due
protection at our hands. Poor little ones, who play delightedly with
danger! And then how many among the victims of the Fourth are those who
have not been “celebrating,” but who have been shot down or burnt to
death by the wanton recklessness of Independence Day “Patriots” (God
save the mark!). Bullets, cannon-crackers, blank cartridges, and strings
of Chinese crackers spare none. Little babes have had their heads torn
open, mothers have been killed as they sat beside their children, scores
of girls have been burnt to death by having lighted firecrackers or
fireworks thrown in their direction. Runaways have been frequent because
hoodlums love to throw great “bombs” under frightened teams, and one of
the merriest sports has been to place large torpedoes on car-tracks. In
Vincennes (Indiana), for instance, one Fourth was “celebrated” by placing
boxes of explosives on the tracks, by means of which car windows were
shattered, passengers terrified and injured, and traffic blocked for
hours; after these boxes had all been picked up it was found that two
barrels of explosives had been collected. In Boston, only two years ago,
seventy arrests were made for using firearms, while in Pittsburg a party
of rich, young hoodlums terrorized the holiday crowds by dashing along in
an automobile, firing volleys of shots up and down the streets and into
the shops. Pittsburg’s arrests July 4, 1907, numbered 300. But, then,
what can we expect when we repeal for a period of twenty-four hours
almost all laws regarding safety and sanity?
As for the licensed recklessness, responsible for so many accidents,
the recital of some of the mad acts to which it has led in the past is
simply incredible. Some of these acts were: the throwing of dynamite
bombs and giant crackers and the firing of revolvers into holiday crowds,
the tossing of lighted firecrackers into the laps, or against the thin
clothing, of women and girls, resulting in their being roasted to death;
the filling of pipes and tin cans with dynamite, or the stuffing of
bottles with lighted firecrackers—all with inevitable consequences.
These are but a few of the acts which caused these 33,073 accidents, but
the excuse for all was always the same—Patriotism! If this, however,
is Patriotism, then it recalls—with but a slight variation as to
meaning—that utterance of Dr. Johnson’s: “Patriotism which is the last
refuge of the scoundrel.” However, it is not Patriotism, but only craving
for noise and excitement and danger which kills and blinds and maims on
our Day of Carnage. Some, indeed, go so far as to declare that the usual
celebration of the Fourth is “due to desire to break loose into a day
of savagery and wallow in the unusual.” Perhaps, if a stop is not soon
put to this mad orgy, we shall find ourselves changing the words of our
National Anthem, as suggested by one of our dailies, and singing:
“My country, ’Tis of Thee,
For Thou hast Crippled Me.”
However, it is not Patriotism but Hoodlumism and the desire to revel in a
day from which all sane and safe restrictions have been removed, which
may be said to guide most of the celebrants on the Fourth, for most of
them are undoubtedly ignorant of its glorious significance. That this is
true was amusingly shown in one of our large eastern cities where between
thirty and forty thousand children were asked in the public schools why
they celebrated the Fourth of July. The favorite answer was said to have
been “For shoots,” others were: “For a band,” “For chicken to eat,” and
most astounding of all “For the King of the Jews” (the similarity of
sound between Jew and July doubtless suggesting the last).
The duration of our “noise-fest” varies in different localities, in
some being limited to a few hours, in others being permitted to extend
over several weeks. Where this premature celebration is allowed, it
naturally entails great suffering on the sick, not to speak of the
additional danger incurred by the youthful participants. It is this early
start which, doubtless, prompted the remark: “The Fourth of July is the
only holiday which begins before it happens.” As for the celebration
proper, it generally starts on the evening of the third and lasts until
the morning or the afternoon of the fifth. In some cities, however,
it does not begin until midnight, in others not until four o’clock in
the morning. However, even where the noisy period is the shortest, the
suffering borne by our hospital patients is sufficient to excite the
sympathy of all those with whom they come in contact.
Regarding the monetary cost of our celebration, New York City is reported
to have spent about $14,000,000 on the celebration of two holidays, with
a resultant loss of 11 persons killed and 768 injured. As for the total
monetary loss to the whole country, it can scarcely be calculated, nor
can the fire-loss be estimated. Regarding the latter, however, I have
been enabled, through the courtesy of Mr. Miller, General Agent of the
National Board of Fire Underwriters, to obtain a few figures which show
that during five years (from 1898 to 1902 inclusive) there were 4,827
fires in the United States due to fireworks; in Massachusetts from 1902
to 1906 inclusive there were 278 fires due to the same cause; and in
Boston in one year, 1906, 72 took place. But quite apart from the effect
of these conflagrations on our fire-loss (which is about nine times as
high as that of the chief countries of Europe—$3 per capita as against 33
cents), many accidents might perhaps be traced to carelessness engendered
in the young by the annually repeated spectacle of a whole community
playing with fire and explosives. I firmly believe that this one day of
dangerous license exerts a pernicious effect upon the other three hundred
and sixty-four days of the year.
An example of what an enthusiastically patriotic and yet sane and safe
holiday observance can be, was given last May, when England and her
colonies celebrated “Empire Day.” This fête was observed by tens of
millions, scattered over one-fourth of the world’s surface, and yet not
one death was reported—not a single accident marred the glory and the
happiness of the day. In this splendid world-pageant, the citizens of
to-morrow were the chief actors, and it is estimated that fully eight
millions took part. Children in long procession, thousands of them in
uniform, wearing flags on their breasts and carrying them aloft in an
endless blaze of color, marched along to render homage to the Union
Jack, which fluttered out above their heads as the little soldiers were
reviewed, or as they sang the National Anthem. The floral emblem of the
day was the daisy or, failing that, the bachelor’s button, marigold
or marguerite—the watchwords were “Responsibility, duty, sympathy,
self-sacrifice.” In addition to the National Anthem, Rudyard Kipling’s
“Children’s Song” was also sung by millions of little ones:
“Lord of our birth, our faith, our pride,
For whose dear sake our Fathers died,
O, Motherland, we pledge to thee
Head, heart and hand through years to be.”
As for France, everybody knows how joyfully it enters upon the
celebration of its Day of Liberation, July 14th. Military reviews,
artistically beautiful street decoration, free theatrical and operatic
performances, music, splendid displays of fireworks from the bridges, and
public dancing in the streets and squares, make up a day of happy and
sane observance—a huge kermess. Perhaps no other country celebrates its
birthday with quite the same stern simplicity, the same touching faith as
Switzerland, when on August 1st, no outward manifestation of the national
thanksgiving is remarked, except in the ringing of bells and the blazing
of bonfires on the mountain peaks, or in the singing of a few inspiring
songs. The whole nation seems to be listening to the voices of the past,
while continuing its daily tasks, this sturdy band of mountaineers! And
thus with the celebrations of yet more European countries, Germany,
Sweden, Denmark and still others, everything is marked by sanity and
order, and yet by true thanksgiving and joy.
But although the American abroad may well blush with shame in comparing
our “Horrible Fourth,” our “Tetanus Day,” our “Annual Massacre,” our
“Modern Massacre of Innocents,” our “Carnival of Lockjaw,” our “Bloody
Fourth,” or our “Day of Carnage,” with the fête days of other lands,
let him take courage, for at last it really seems as if “Explosive
Patriotism” were “on the run.” Throughout the Union, scores of cities
have already passed or are considering the passage of restrictive or,
better still, of prohibitive ordinances, and countless organizations are
getting into line in their efforts to substitute attractive features,
such as children’s processions and merry-making, pageantry, musical
festivals, picnics, and other safe observances for our present orgy of
death. In order to show at a glance what has already been gained by
legislation in preventing Fourth of July accidents, let us place side
by side the results obtained a few months ago in two groups of cities.
In the first let us put Washington, Cleveland, Baltimore and Toledo,
which cities protected by prohibitive or restrictive ordinances, gave
last Fourth of July a total of twelve accidents. The other four, New
York, Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis, which were all relatively
unprotected, gave a total of thirteen hundred and ninety-seven accidents,
or an average of almost three hundred and fifty apiece. Drastic
ordinances and stern enforcement are required if we are ever to down our
National Disgrace.
Let us protect our little ones from death and danger, and then the next
step will be to learn to express “social ideals in action,” for as Mr.
Luther Gulick so well says: “If there is any one thing, any one occasion,
in connection with which there should be national community expression,
it should be in connection with our celebration of American independence.
This constitutes not only the pivotal point in the history of American
institutions, but is the pivotal idea upon which democracy rests.”
Nothing is more inspiring than love of country, therefore let us advocate
a “religion of patriotism” and do away with a false death-dealing
patriotism which, annually, on our National Birthday disgraces us in the
eyes of the whole civilized world.
AMERICANIZING THE FOURTH
(A Suggestion for a Pageant of Liberty.)
BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER
The old, undemocratic idea of honoring the birthday of American
independence is embodied in annual explosions of barbarism which have
already done to death many more persons than the Revolutionary War
destroyed. Indeed, our peaceful celebration seems as much more dangerous
than the old style of warfare as small-pox is more dangerous than
chicken-pox.
Our new festival in honor of Liberty is—or is soon to be—very different.
Instead of a day of pseudo-patriotism,—a Moloch-day sacred to blinding
and maiming our little ones, to shredding and roasting them alive,
blowing them to bits or allowing them to struggle to their death in
the horrible clutch of tetanus—there is proposed a day of the deepest,
fairest, most enthusiastic, most genuine patriotism; a day of emphasis
not upon erratic individualism but upon national solidarity; a day of
fun yet of education and inspiration to old as well as young and to all
the nations that are now being fused in our gigantic melting pot. In a
word, the new movement aims, as it should, to make the Fourth our most
profoundly _American_ holiday.
The recent rise of the Independence Day pageant is a by-product of
two wide twentieth century movements: the new classicism and the new
democracy. The new classicism is behind the current tendency of certain
of the arts to react from the rich, vague elaboration of an exaggerated
romanticism toward plain, clearly organized simplicity. In a word, it
is trying to restore a normal balance between the emotional and the
intellectual elements in art. In music this movement is led by Max Reger,
the modern Bach; in architecture it is felt in the _Art Nouveau_ and, in
America, in such significant buildings as the New York Library and the
Pennsylvania Terminal; in literature in the recent rebirth of the drama,
of which the pageant is a near relative. For the pageant has been defined
as “a dramatic presentation of the history of a community or of the
development of a phase of civilization, given by the people themselves.”
The movement called the new democracy is slightly older. Under President
Roosevelt this country discovered a new and more vital meaning in the
old term “democracy.” And it has not taken us long to find out that on
Independence Day the square deal is less thrillingly symbolized by the
maiming and slaughter of innocent thousands through the meaningless
cracker and pistol than by the coöperation of all nationalities and
social grades on our shores in great, concerted movements, large with the
meaning of the past, the present and the future America, and glowing
with the local colors of the many peoples that have made and are to make
this nation.
The inevitable medium for such expression is the pageant. And though
this form of celebration is still in its early infancy and has not yet
attained even the modest measure of clarity already reached in other
arts by the new classicism, nor even the puny measure of real democracy
exhibited to-day by our “square deal” renaissance, yet it is quite as big
with promise as they.
The Pageant of Liberty, which is here proposed, is based on the idea that
America was the pioneer in that modern struggle for liberty which has
played such a striking part in the world’s history since 1776. Our War of
Independence inspired the French Revolution which, in turn, brandished
the torch of liberty through Europe during the nineteenth century until,
in our day, the flame has spread to other continents.
This Pageant consists of a parade of simple floats which may or may not
end in a dramatic and choral performance or “masque” in some athletic
field or fair ground or stadium. The floats and their costumed characters
are to be the actors in this masque.
These floats need not be elaborate or expensive or hard to construct. In
most cases all that is required is a plain large truck, festooned with
simple garlands, and with the wheels hidden in oak branches. This truck
carries the necessary characters, dressed, of course, in the costume of
the period.
There need be none of those complicated, elaborately colored, pyramidal
structures of “staff” which endangered the success of the Hudson-Fulton
Celebration in New York City. For they are difficult and costly to
prepare and doubtful of effect. The effect sought should be pictorial
rather than sculpturesque. In many cases a single small platform or table
is the only “property” required.
The floats in procession represent the history of the modern struggle for
liberty. This history, however, may be depicted as fully or as sketchily
as the particular resources of each place suggest, each foreign colony in
a town working up its own float under central supervision.
In our day most American cities and towns have a large percentage of the
foreign born. Let us suppose, for example, that a certain large town
consists of the following nine nationalities: Americans, French, Irish,
Servians, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, and Persians. In that
case its particular pageant would consist of at least ten floats, each
attended on foot or horseback by its appropriate escort of the same race,
preferably in national costume, and by bands of music playing—perhaps on
native instruments—those national airs most nearly identified with the
particular historical event set forth.
I. THE AMERICAN float will naturally head the procession, for precedence
in this pageant is fixed by the historical order in which the various
struggles for liberty occurred.
The American float might represent the Fathers sitting about a table and
signing the Declaration of Independence, with the Liberty Bell hanging
aloft. Or it might be boat-shaped, with Washington in the bow, crossing
the Delaware and tattered soldiers straining at the oars or poling away
at imaginary ice-cakes.
The other floats would follow in this order:
II. FRANCE. King Louis XVI is forced to recognize General Lafayette,
the commander of the new National Guard, on July 17, 1789, and affixes
to his own royal garments the tricolor cockade of red, blue and white,
the symbol of liberty. This event occurred three days after the storming
of the Bastille, a subject that would not lend itself well to pictorial
treatment.
III. IRELAND. Some incident from the Rebellion of 1798. The float
might be in honor of the patriotic Society of United Irishmen and of
their founder, Theobald Wolfe Tone. Or it might represent the dramatic
betrayal, on May 19, 1798, of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the promised leader
of the revolt.
IV. SERVIA. Some incident from the splendid rebellion of 1804 when
the Serbs, who had been galled by the Ottoman yoke for more than four
centuries, rose and drove the Turkish _dahis_ out of Servia. Their two
leaders were Black George and Milosch who have been called respectively
the Achilles and the Ulysses of Servian history. The float might give
the crucial moment in the decisive battle of Schabaz, with Black George
leading his men against those picturesque standard-bearers of the Turkish
army, the bravest Begs of Bosnia.
V. GERMANY. It is not so easy to find a moment in the German struggle
which is both significant and simple enough for our purpose. Perhaps the
“Wartburg Festival” would answer. Some historians treat this incident
in lighter vein, others seriously. But all agree that the government
reactionaries took it very much to heart and at once began a reign of
tyranny that was largely responsible for the revolutions of ’30 and of
historic ’48. At any rate the Festival would make a most effective float.
This was the way it happened.