COPYRIGHT BY
FREDERICK FRANKLIN SCHRADER
1920
PUBLISHED BY
CONCORD PUBLISHING COMPANY
INCORPORATED
NEW YORK, U. S. A.
Illustration: Frederick Franklin Schrader (‡ signature)
“1683-1920”
The Fourteen Points and What Became of
Them--Foreign Propaganda in the Public
Schools--Rewriting the History of the
United States--The Espionage Act and
How it Worked--“Illegal and Indefensible
Blockade” of the Central Powers--1,000,000
Victims of Starvation--Our Debt to
France and to Germany--The War
Vote in Congress--Truth About
the Belgian Atrocities--Our
Treaty with Germany and How
Observed--The Alien Property
Custodianship--Secret Will
of Cecil Rhodes--Racial
Strains in American
Life--Germantown
Settlement of
1683
_And a Thousand Other Topics_
by
FREDERICK FRANKLIN SCHRADER
Former Secretary Republican Congressional Committee
and Author “Republican Campaign Text Book, 1898.”
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PREFACE
With the ending of the war many books will be released dealing with
various questions and phases of the great struggle, some of them
perhaps impartial, but the majority written to make propaganda for
foreign nations with a view to rendering us dissatisfied with our
country and imposing still farther upon the ignorance, indifference
and credulity of the American people.
The author’s aim in the following pages has been to provide a book of
ready reference on a multitude of questions which have been raised by
the war. It is strictly American in that it seeks to educate those
who need education in the truth about American institutions and
national problems.
A blanket indictment has been found against a whole race. That race
comprises upward of 26 per cent. of the American people and has
been a stalwart factor in American life since the middle of the
seventeenth century. This indictment has been found upon tainted
evidence. As is shown in the following pages, a widespread propaganda
has been, and is still, at work to sow the seeds of discord and
sedition in order to reconcile us to a pre-Revolutionary political
condition. This propaganda has invaded our public schools, and cannot
be more effectively combatted than by education.
The contingency that the book may be decried as German propaganda
has no terrors for the author, and has not deterred him from his
purpose to deal with facts from an angle that has not been popular
during the past five years. What is here set down is a statement of
facts, directed not against institutions, but men. Men come and go;
institutions endure if they are rooted in the hearts of the people.
The author believes in the sacredness and perpetuity of our
institutions. He believes in the great Americans of the past, and in
American traditions. He is content to have his Americanism measured
by any standard applied to persons who, like Major George Haven
Putnam, feel prompted to apologize to their English friends for
“the treason of 1776,” or who pass unrebuked and secretly condone
the statement of former Senator James Hamilton Lewis, that the
Constitution is an obsolete instrument.
Statements of fact may be controverted; they cannot be disproved by
an Espionage Act, however repugnant their telling may sound to the
stagnant brains of those who have been uninterruptedly happy because
they were spared the laborious process of thinking for themselves
throughout the war, or that not inconsiderable host which derives
pleasure and profit from keeping alive the hope of one day seeing
their country reincorporated with “the mother country”--the mother
country of 30 per cent. of the American people.
It is to arouse the patriotic consciousness of a part of the
remaining 70 per cent. that this compilation of political and
historical data has been undertaken.
European issues and questions have been included in so far only as
they exercised a bearing on American affairs, or influenced and
shaped public opinion, prejudice and conclusions. To the extent that
they serve the cause of truth they are entitled to a place in these
pages.
THE AUTHOR.
New York City, January, 1920.
=Allied Nations in the War.=--The following countries were at war
with Germany at the given dates:
Russia 1 August, 1914
France 3 August, 1914
Belgium 3 August, 1914
Great Britain 4 August, 1914
Servia 6 August, 1914
Montenegro 9 August, 1914
Japan 23 August, 1914
San Marino 24 May, 1915
Portugal 9 March, 1916
Italy 28 August, 1916
Roumania 28 August, 1916
U. S. A. 6 April, 1917
Cuba 7 April, 1917
Panama 10 April, 1917
Greece 29 June, 1917
Siam 22 July, 1917
Liberia 4 August, 1917
China 14 August, 1917
Brazil 26 October, 1917
Ecuador 8 December, 1917
Guatemala 23 April, 1918
Haiti 15 July, 1918
The following countries broke off diplomatic relations with Germany:
Bolivia April 13, 1917
Nicaragua May 18, 1917
Santo Domingo
Costa Rica Sept. 21, 1917
Peru October 6, 1917
Uruguay October 7, 1917
Honduras July 22, 1918
=Alsace-Lorraine.=--Dr. E. J. Dillon, the distinguished political
writer and student of European problems, in a remarkable article
printed long before the end of the war, called attention to the
general misunderstanding that prevails regarding Alsace-Lorraine.
He said that the two houses of the Legislature in Strasburg made
a statement through their respective speakers which, “however
skeptically it may be received by the allied countries, is thoroughly
relied upon by Germany as a deciding factor” in the vexatious
question affecting those provinces.
The president of the second chamber, Dr. Ricklin (former mayor of
Dammerkirch, then occupied by the French), declared solemnly in the
presence of the Stadthalter that the two provinces, while desiring
modification of their status within the German empire, also desired
their perpetuation of their present union with it.... “The people
of Alsace-Lorraine in its overwhelming majority did not desire war,
and therefore did not desire this war. What it strove for was the
consummation of its political status in the limits of its dependence
upon the German empire, and that settled, to resume its peaceful
avocations. In this respect the war has changed nothing in our
country. We make this confession aloud and before all the world. May
it be everywhere heard, and may peace be speedily vouchsafed us.”
“The speaker of the First Chamber, Dr. Hoeffel,” continues Dr.
Dillon, “also made a pronouncement of a like tenor, of which this is
the pith: ‘Alsace-Lorraine particularly has felt how heavily the war
presses upon us all, but selfless sacrifice is here, too, taken for
granted. Our common task has knit the imperial provinces more closely
together than before, and has also drawn more tightly their links
with the German Empire.’”
Under date of January 17, 1917, Mayor North, of Detweiler, was quoted
in the press of that day: “Alsace-Lorraine needs no liberator. After
the war, I am confident, it will know how to guard its interests
without the interference of any foreign power. The sons of the
country have not bled and died in vain for Germany.”
North is of old Alsatian stock, as is also Former Secretary Petri of
Alsace, who said, when the issue of the war was still undecided: “In
view of the military situation, the reply of the Entente to President
Wilson’s peace note is simply grotesque. It could hardly have used
other words if the French were in Strasburg, Metz, Mayence, etc.”
At the National Congress of United Socialists, March 24, 1913,
Gustave Herve (quoting a dispatch from Brest to the New York “Times”
of the day following), declared, “Alsace was German in race and
civilization, and had been an ancient possession of Germany. One of
the provinces naturally belonged to Germany and the other to France.”
Francis de Pressense, ex-deputy, declared: “Time has done its work.
Alsace-Lorraine no longer wants to return to French rule.”
The last election to the Reichstag before the war showed that
only 157,000 out of a total vote of 417,000 voted for “protesting
candidates,” while 260,000 voted as Germans, not as separatists.
Though forced to live several generations under French rule, it must
be observed that the people of Alsace-Lorraine never ceased to be
Germans. The proper mother tongue of a people is that in which it
prays. The most distinguished Catholic pulpit orator of Alsace in
the last century, Abbe Muhe, who died in 1865, was able only once in
his life to bring himself to preach in French; and Canon Gazeau, of
Strasburg Cathedral, published in 1868 an “Essai sur la conversation
de la langue Allemagne en Alsace,” in which, in the interest of
religion and morals, he energetically resisted the attempt to
extirpate German speech.
The population of Alsace, with the exception of the rich and
comfortable, in its thoughts, words and feeling was thoroughly
German. In a petition which was addressed in 1869 to the Emperor
Napoleon by people of German Lorraine, we read as follows: “O, sir!
How many fathers and mothers of families who earn their bread in the
sweat of their brow impose upon themselves the pious but none the
less heavy duty of teaching their children the catechism in German by
abridging in the winter evenings their own needful hours of sleep.”
In 1869 a radical journal was established by prominent republicans
of Muhlhausen in the interest of propagating agitation against the
French empire among the laboring people. This paper appeared only
in the German language, and justified this course in the following
words: “Because the majority, yes, the very large majority, of the
Alsatian people is German in thought, in feeling, in speech; receives
its religious instruction in German; loves and lives according to
German usages, and will not forget the German language.”
The boundary established in 1871 was the true national and racial
boundary, which had been destroyed by Louis XIV when Germany,
after the Thirty Years War, was too weak to defend it, but which
remained the boundary in the hearts of those on both sides until
the French Revolution, when executions, deportations and process
of ruthless extermination finally broke the spirit of resistance
in the population and made it succumb in order to save itself from
extinction.
The attempt of the French to control the Rhine regions, though
continued for centuries, has been a failure. “To one who has been
through the documents,” writes Raymond D. B. Cahill, in “The Nation”
for July 26, 1919, “an astounding thing is the French picture of
their former experience in ruling the Rhinelands. The student of
that period sees little which should encourage the French to attempt
a repetition of that experiment. Indeed, he is impressed with
the futility of the nation’s attempt to absorb a people of quite
different culture. Although dealing with a people still unawakened by
German patriotism, the French found eighteenth century Rhinelanders
so different, so attached to their own customs and religion, that it
took many years to overcome their resistance.”
It will again require the guillotine, the firebrand and the methods
of violence employed during the French revolution to convert
Alsace-Lorraine into a French possession. France has decisively
declined to submit the question of the annexation to a plebiscite.
The beautiful dream about the “redemption of our lost sons” has
proved a delusion; hundreds of thousands of citizens have been
transported by France in order to blot out the appearance that
there was discontent. Abbe Wetterlé, once a member of the German
Reichstag, and one of the leaders of the pro-French movement, in his
lectures, compiled in his book, “Ce qu était l’Alsace-Lorraine et
ce quelle cera; l’edition Francaise illustrée,” Paris, 1915, said:
“Soldiers who had participated in the battles of 1914 and had invaded
Alsace-Lorraine, returned painfully disappointed. They reported, and
their stories agreed in establishing them as reliable, that the civil
population of the annexed provinces had betrayed them in the most
outrageous manner.”
General Rapp, a descendant of Napoleon’s famous marshal, whose
family has been a resident of the province for 600 years, in a
manifesto signed by him as a member of the “Executive Committee of
the Republic of Alsace-Lorraine,” and addressed to Sir James Eric
Drummond, general secretary of the League of Nations, says: “We,
the representatives of the sovereign people of Alsace-Lorraine,
protest in the name of our people against the systematic ruin of
our homeland. The French government has usurped the sovereignty of
Alsace-Lorraine. The sovereign people of Alsace-Lorraine was not
consulted concerning the constitutional status of the future. We,
representing our people, personifying its sovereignty, assume the
right to speak for the interests of the people of Alsace-Lorraine
before the League of Nations. We are standing today at the parting
of the ways in our history. The hour has come when the people are
asking, ‘Shall it be revolution or self-determination?’ Before that
question is decided we appeal to the good sense of the world, which
must know that until the Alsace-Lorraine question is solved beyond
the limits of our country, two great nations will never know peace.”
This manifesto, dated Basel, August 25, 1919, informs the world that
millions of francs were taken out of the treasury of the French
government to finance the reception committee of President Poincare
and Premier Clemenceau in every city in Alsace-Lorraine, and for the
payment of agents to inflame manifestations of joy, finding vent in
shouts of “Vive la France;” that wagonloads of decorations for the
receptions, French flags, banners and torches and Alsatian costumes
especially manufactured in Paris, were imported for the occasion.
The meager dispatches which reach the public in spite of the iron
hand of suppression which is wielded in Alsace-Lorraine teem with
accounts of anti-French demonstrations and the arrest and deportation
of citizens. The police in October were reported exercising a hectic
energy in searching houses in Strasburg; all business houses were
directed to discharge their German employes, by order of Commissary
General Millerand. Hundreds of persons were arrested in Rombach,
Hagendingen and Diedenhoefen. The people were taken in automobiles to
Metz, and after passing the night in the citadel, were deported over
the bridge at Kehl the next day.
A dispatch of October 27, 1919, says: “Another trainload of wounded
Frenchmen has arrived at the main station at Mayence. They are said
to come from the Saar Valley and Alsace-Lorraine. It is reported
of the revolt in the Saar that the men sang, ‘We will triumph over
France and die for Germany.’ The band which played ‘Die Wacht am
Rhein’ and ‘Deutschland Ueber Alles’ was subjected to a heavy fine,
which was immediately paid by a leading industrial, in consequence of
which the commandant was relieved of his office.” In Sulzbach, on the
Saar, the French issued the following proclamation:
“‘Every person guilty of uttering shouts or grinning at a
passing troop will be arrested and brought before a court
martial for insulting the army. Every German official with
cap or arm-emblem who refrains from saluting officers will
be arrested and after an examination will be released.
His name will be reported to general headquarters of the
division.’”
In the new electoral orders, 30 per cent. of the population of
Alsace-Lorraine is disfranchised. The voters are divided into three
classes, consisting of persons of French birth or pure French
extraction; second, of children born of mixed marriages. In this
class those only have the franchise who are the sons of French
fathers married to German mothers. The third class, consisting of
voters having a German father and an Alsatian mother, are completely
disfranchised.
France is proceeding in Alsace-Lorraine as the English did in Acadia.
“The Nation” of September 6, 1919, indicates the measures in the
following article:
Military measures for the punishment of troublesome French
citizens of Alsace-Lorraine are quoted in the following
extract from “L’Humanité” of July 16:
“Citizen Grumbach spoke on Sunday, before the National
Council, of the order issued recently at Strasbourg
by M. Millerand, a decree under which any citizen of
Alsace-Lorraine who notably appeared to be an element of
disorder would be immediately turned over to the military
authorities.
“This abominable decree, whose existence Grumbach thus
revealed, is now known in its entirety. It is to be found
in ‘The Official Bulletin of Upper Alsace,’ No. 25, June
21, 1919. Its title is ‘Decree Relative to Citizens of
Alsace-Lorraine in Renewable Detachment’ (sic). Order is
given to the municipalities to draw up lists of citizens of
Alsace-Lorraine in renewable detachment.
“And here is what Article 2 of this strange decree says:
“1. Every citizen of Alsace-Lorraine whose class has not
yet been demobilized in France, and who notably appears to
be a disorderly element, shall be immediately, upon the
order of the Commandant of the District, arrested by the
police and turned over to the military authorities.
“His papers will be sent by the Commandant to the
commanding general of the territory, who, after inquiry,
will command the return of the arrested man:
“To his old organization if he was a volunteer in the
French army;
“To the Alsace-Lorraine depot in Paris if he is a former
prisoner of the Allied armies, or a liberated German
soldier.
“2. Citizens of Alsace-Lorraine whose class has been
demobilized in France.
“Any of these men who notably appears to be a disorderly
element shall be arraigned by request of the Commissaries
of the Republic before the Commission de Triage under the
same classification as undesirable civilian citizens of
Alsace-Lorraine.
“Strasbourg, 24 May, 1919.
“Commissary General of the Republic,
“A. MILLERAND.”
After this, who can be scandalized by the vehement
criticisms directed at the National Council by Grumbach,
against the state of siege and of arbitrary rule which the
Government of the Republic imposes upon Alsace-Lorraine?
Does M. Clemenceau, that “old libertarian” know the
decree of Millerand? In any case it is important to know
that this decree is not aimed at the Germans residing in
Alsace-Lorraine, but at the citizens of Alsace-Lorraine of
Category A, those indisputably French. Incredible, yet true!
=Americans Not An English People.=--Careful computation made by Prof.
Albert B. Faust, of Cornell University, shows that while the English,
Scotch and Welsh together constituted 30.2 per cent. of the white
population of the United States of the whole of 81,731,957, according
to the census of 1910, the German element, including Hollanders, made
up 26.4 per cent. of the total, and constituted a close second, the
Irish coming next with a percentage of 18.6.
Total white population in the U. S. proper, 1910 81,731,957 100%
English (including Scotch and Welsh, about
3,000,000) 24,750,000 30.2
German (including Dutch, about 3,000,000) 21,600,000 26.4
Irish (including Catholic and Protestants) 15,250,000 18.6
Scandinavian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) 4,000,000 4.8
French (including Canadian French) 3,000,000 3.6
Italian (mostly recent immigration) 2,500,000 3.
Hebrew (one-half recent Russian) 2,500,000 3.
Spanish (mostly Spanish-American) 2,000,000 2.4
Austrian Slavs (Bohemian and Moravian, old
Slovac, etc., recent) 2,000,000 2.4
Russians (Slavs and Finns one-tenth) 1,000,000 1.2
Poles (many early in 19th Century) 1,000,000 1.2
Magyars (recent immigration) 700,000 .8
Balkan Peninsular 250,000 .3
All others (exclusive of colored) 1,181,957 2.1
According to this table, more than twenty-six Americans out of every
hundred are of German origin and about thirty out of every hundred
only are either of English, Scotch or Welsh descent. Recent writers,
like Dr. William Griffis, and Douglas Campbell (“The Puritan in
Holland, England and America”) have vigorously disputed the theory
that the Americans are an English people. As Prof. Faust shows,
only 30.2 per cent. of the mixed races of the United States are
of English origin, while nearly 70 per cent. are of other racial
descent. Dr. Griffis wisely declares: “We are less an English nation
than composite of the Teutonic peoples,” and the great American
historian, Motley, declared: “We are Americans; but yesterday we were
Europeans--Netherlanders, Saxons, Normans, Swabians, Celts.”
“She (England) has a conviction that whatever good there
is in us is wholly English, when the truth is that we
are worth nothing except as far as we have disinfected
ourselves of Anglicism.” James Russell Lowell in “Study
Windows.”
“Most American authors and all Englishmen who have written
on the subject, set out with the theory that the people
in the United States are an English race, and that their
institutions, when not original, are derived from England.
These assumptions underlie all American histories, and they
have come to be so generally accepted that to question
them seems almost to savor of temerity.... Certainly =no
intelligent American can study the English people as he
does those of the Continent, and then believe that we are
of the same race, except as members of the Aryan division
of the human family, with the same human nature=.”--Douglas
Campbell. “The Puritan in Holland, England and America,”
Chapter I.
“The Germans were among the earliest and the most numerous of
American settlers. The Anglo-Saxons are the acknowledged masters of
the earth. The bulk of the early immigrants were of these two stocks.
Examine the matter from any angle, and it is apparent that the
American people are the direct, immediate descendants of world empire
builders.
“The American colonies were all settled by British, French, Germans,
Spanish and other inhabitants of the north and west of Europe. The
central and western Europeans played no part in the early history of
the colonies. Colonial ancestry means the ancestry of the world’s
conquering peoples.
“Immigration during most of the nineteenth century was from the same
portion of Europe. The immigration records (kept only since 1820)
show that between that year and 1840 the immigrants from Europe
numbered 594,504, among whom there were 358,994 from the British
Isles [including, of course, the Irish--Editor] and 159,215 from
Germany, making a total from the two countries of 518,209, or 87 per
cent. of the immigrants arriving in the 20-year period. During the
next 20 years (1840-1860) the total of immigrants from Europe was
4,050,159, of whom the British Isles furnished 2,385,846, and Germany
1,386,392, making for these two countries 95 per cent. of the whole.
Even during the 20 years from 1860 to 1880, 82 per cent. of the
immigrants to the United States from Europe hailed from the British
Isles and from Germany. During the most of the nineteenth century
European immigration was overwhelmingly British and German.
“Nearly nine-tenths of the early immigrants to the United States came
from these countries. They and the countries immediately adjoining
them furnished practically all of the men and women who settled
in North America from the earliest days of colonization down to
1880--the beginning of the last generation. The American race stock
is built around the stock of Great Britain and Germany.”--Prof. Scott
Nearing.
(See “The German Element in American Life,” elsewhere.)
Whatever racial prejudice and political bias may attempt to do,
philosophers and thinkers know that from the German race emanated the
ideals of freedom and personal liberty which is the heritage of the
whole world. To that great French thinkers, Montesquieu, Guizot and
others have candidly testified, as have Englishmen, such as Hume and
Carlyle. In describing the battle of Chalons in his standard work,
“The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” Prof. E. S. Creasy says:
In order to estimate the full importance of the battle
of Chalons we must keep steadily in mind who and what
the Germans were and the important distinction between
them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman
Empire; and it is to be understood that the Gothic and
Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. Now,
in two remarkable traits the Germans differed from the
Sarmatic as well as from the Slavic nations, and indeed
from all those other races to whom the Greeks and Romans
gave the designation of barbarians. I allude to their
personal freedom and regard for the rights of men; secondly
to the respect paid by them to the female sex and the
chastity for which the latter were celebrated among the
people of the North. These were the foundations of that
probity of character, self-respect and purity of manners
which may be traced among the Germans and Goths even
during pagan times, and which, when their sentiments were
enlightened by Christianity, brought out those splendid
traits of character which distinguish the age of chivalry
and romance. (See Prichard’s “Researches Into the Physical
History of Man.”) What the intermixture of the German stock
with the classic, at the fall of the western empire, has
done for mankind may be best felt, with Arnold (Arnold’s
“Lectures on Modern History”) over how large a portion
of the earth the influence of the German element is now
extended.
It affects more or less the whole west of Europe, from the
head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory
of Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides
and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a
large portion of this space is not predominantly German;
but even in France and Italy and Spain the influence of the
Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards,
while it has colored even the language, has in blood
and institutions left its mark legibly and indelibly.
Germany, the low countries, Switzerland for the most part,
Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and our own islands, are
all in language, in blood and institutions, German most
decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards
and Portuguese; all North America and Australia with
Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of
the German race in Africa and in India; it is enough to say
that half of Europe and all of America and Australia are
German, more or less completely, in race, in language, in
institutions or in all.
It has been extravagantly modish to distort ethnological facts and
set up new gods, but the assailants of the German race have not
been able successfully to deny that tremendous influence which has
given birth to the free institutions of the world, and there are
not wanting among Americans of authority those who have been openly
outspoken for the truth. President Garfield in his article on “My
Experiences as a Lawyer” in the “North American Review” for June,
1887, p. 569, observed, alluding to a speech made by him on the death
of his friend, Representative Gustav Schleicher of Texas in 1879:
“We are accustomed to call England our fatherland. It is a
mistake; one of the greatest of modern historians writing
the history of the English people has said that England
is not the fatherland of the English-speaking people, but
Germany. I go into that and say, ‘The real fatherland of
the people of this country is Germany, and our friend who
has fallen came to us direct from our fatherland, and, not,
like the rest of us, around by the way of England.’ Then I
give a little sketch of German character, and what Carlyle
and Montesquieu said, that the British constitution came
out of the woods of Germany.”
In a like manner Charles E. Hughes, while governor of New York State,
in a speech at Mount Vernon in 1908, said:
Did you ever think that a very large portion of our people,
despite their present distinction of home and birthplace,
and even nationality, are descended from those common
ancestors who a few years ago lived their life in the
German forests? There were nourished the institutions of
freedom; and if any one were to point to any place in the
world to which, above all, we trace our free institutions,
we would point, above all, to the forests of Germany.
=Americans Saved from Mexican Mob at Tampico by German Cruiser
“Dresden.”=--The destruction of the little German cruiser “Dresden”
by the British in the neutral waters of Chili, in March, 1915, must
call up sentimental memories in the hearts of certain Americans.
For it was the gallant little “Dresden” under command of Capt. von
Koehler, that saved the lives of hundreds of American refugees who
were surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob of Mexicans at the Southern
Hotel, Tampico, Mexico, April 21, 1914. These fugitives had gathered
from all parts of Mexico, expecting to be protected by the American
battleships in Tampico Bay. But by some criminal short-sightedness
the American ships were ordered to withdraw, and the Americans at
the Southern Hotel were exposed to immediate death by a raging mob,
when Capt. von Koehler entered upon the scene and threatened to lay
Tampico in ashes if the mob did not disperse in fifteen minutes.
He then sent a squad of his blue jackets ashore and extricated
the besieged people from their dangerous position. Two American
yachts, hoisting the German and English flags, carried the refugees
to a place of safety. Capt. von Koehler’s gallantry was publicly
acknowledged by Secretary of State Bryan. A special dispatch to
the New York “Times,” dated Galveston, April 27, stated that “the
officers of the battleship ‘Connecticut’ said tonight that but for
the action of the men of the German cruiser ‘Dresden’ there would
have been bloodshed on Tuesday night.” And “the refugees arriving on
the ‘Esperanza’ sent this cable dispatch to the German Emperor:
“To your officers and men we owe our lives and pledge our
lifetime gratitude. We salute you and the noble men of your
Empire.”
=Armstadt, Major George.=--After the sack of Washington, the burning
of the White House and the Capitol, in 1812, the British proceeded
to attack Baltimore. This action brought into great prominence
two Americans of German descent. General Johann Stricker, born in
Frederick, Md., in 1759, was in command of the militia, and Major
George Armstadt commanded Fort McHenry. He was born in New Market
in 1780 of Hessian parents. “If Armstadt had not held Fort McHenry
during its terrific bombardment by the British,” writes Rudolf Cronau
in “Our Hyphenated Citizens,” a valuable little brochure, “our
national hymn, ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ most probably would never
have been written.”
=American School Children and Foreign Propaganda.=--The tendency
in some directions to picture George III as “a German King,” in
order to shift upon the shoulders of a historical manikin the
responsibility for the American Revolutionary War, has gone so far
as to attempt to blind the unthinking masses to the truth about
our war of independence; but it should be remembered that if the
responsibility rested wholly with this alleged “German King,” then
Washington, Jefferson and Franklin deceived the American people and
the Declaration of Independence was a lie. In that event we have
lived 140 years of our history under a delusion and a fiction. It
is eminently to the interest of English propaganda to create and
strengthen this impression, and it is regrettable that no organized
opposition has developed to the attempt to inculcate into the minds
of our school children the conception that but for this German King
we should still be a contented colony of the British crown.
How is this fiction fostered?
Largely through the medium of certain important book publishers,
who print school books, though the public is ignorant of the fact
that the majority of these publishing houses are financed either
by British or American circles closely intermarried or financially
related to English houses.
The movement to rewrite the history of the United States in the
interest of England is so widespread and persistent that the chairman
of the Americanization Committee of the Massachusetts Chamber of
Commerce, in November, 1919, published an expose of his discoveries
and conclusions as to the extent of the British propaganda, in which
he said:
To work among aliens to build up respect and loyalty for
the United States while a stupendous plot is under way to
destroy the very thing which we are pleading with these
aliens to preserve is wasted effort.
In view of the efforts to burden the shoulders of George III with
the offenses that led to the Declaration of Independence while
exonerating the English people of any guilt, by representing him as a
“German King” to the uninformed minds of our school children, it is
pertinent to quote Lord Macaulay’s description of George III:
The young king was a born Englishman; all his tastes, good
or bad, were English.... His age, his appearance and all
that was known of his character conciliated public favor.
He was in the bloom of youth; his person and address were
pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery
might without any glowing absurdity ascribe to him many
princely virtues.
We find nothing in Macaulay to warrant the conclusion that George,
a born Englishman in the third generation, was not complete master
of the English language, as has been alleged; and, moreover, if he
can reasonably be called a German, because of his German ancestry,
it follows that the same allegation can be reasonably preferred
against President Wilson, and that, because of his even nearer
English ancestry, he is really an Englishman and not an American--an
imputation which his partisans would declare an absurdity on its face.
A further proof of the vicious misrepresentation which describes
George III singly and alone responsible for the cause of the
Revolution is contained in the words of our forefathers themselves.
They must have known whom they were fighting, who tyrannized over
them and who were trying to subjugate them. And this is what they
said to the world:
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for
redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions
have been answered only by repeated inquiry.... Nor have
we been wanting in attention to our =British brethren=. We
have warned them from time to time of attempts by =their
legislature= to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction
over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to
their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured
them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations. =They, too=, have been deaf to the voice of
justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce
in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold
=them=, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in
peace friends.
=American School Children and English Propaganda.=--The Encyclopedia
Britannica says: “The notion that England was justified in throwing
on America part of the expenses caused in the late war =was popular
in the country=.... George III, who thought that the first duty of
the Americans was to obey himself, =had on his side the mass of the
unreflecting Englishmen= who thought that the first duty of all
colonists was to be useful and submissive of the mother country....
When the news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga arrived in 1777,
subscription of money to raise new regiments poured freely in.”
It is not enough to disprove the absurd statement that the English
people had no responsibility for the stamp act and the oppressions
that were practiced against the American colonies, and that all
these evils were the work of George III; it is vital for the
American people to recognize the danger of the ultimate aim of the
Anglo-American publishers who are supplying the public schools
with histories in which the English are exalted and the Germans
represented as our immemorial enemies, all contrary evidence
notwithstanding. (See under “Frederick the Great,” elsewhere.)
Edward F. McSweeney, of the Americanization Committee of the
Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, in tracing the baleful propaganda,
calls attention to a Fourth of July demonstration in London in 1917,
during which George Haven Putnam, himself a native of London, head of
one of the largest book publishing houses in this country, made the
following observations:
The feelings and prejudices of the Americans concerning
their transatlantic kinsfolk were shaped for my generation,
as for the boys of every generation that has grown up
since 1775, on text books and histories that presented
unhistorical, partisan and often distorted views of the
history of the first English colonies, of the events of the
Revolution, of the issues that brought about the War of
1812-15, and the grievances of 1861-1865.
The influence of the British element in our population has
proved sufficiently strong to enable the English-Americans
to bring it under control and to weld it into a nation
that, in its common character and purposes, =is English=.
=Text books are now being prepared which will present
juster historical accounts of the events of 1775-83,
1812-15 and 1861-65.=
Americans of today, looking back at the history with a
better sense of justice and a better knowledge of the
facts than was possible for their ancestors, are prepared
to recognize also that their great-grandfathers had
treated with serious injustice and with great unwisdom the
loyalists of New York and of New England, who had held to
the cause of the Crown.
It is in order now to admit that the loyalists had a fair
cause to defend, and it was not to be wondered at that many
men of the more conservative way of thinking should have
convinced themselves that =the cause of good government
for the colonies would be better served by maintaining the
royal authority and by improving the royal methods than
by breaking away into the all-dubious possibilities of
independence=.
I had occasion some months back when in Halifax to
apologize before the great Canadian Club, to the
descendants of some of the men who had in 1776 been
forced out of Boston through the illiberal policy of my
great-grandfather and his associates. My friends in Halifax
(and the group included some of my cousins) said that the
apology had come a little late, but that they were prepared
to accept it. They were prepared to meet more than half way
the Yankee suggestion.
During the present sojourn in England I met in one of the
Conservative clubs an old Tory acquaintance, who, with
characteristic frankness, said:
“Major, I am inclined to think that it was a good thing
that we did not break up your republic in 1861. =We have
need of you today in our present undertaking.=”
The methods to be followed in the pursuit of the plan to induce
us to repudiate our ancestors and their action are diverse and
always devious. It begins with an agitation for “an orderly Fourth
of July,” in order to wipe out the memories of 1776, and it finds
expression in insidious attempts to discredit our national poets,
notably Longfellow, for recording the rape of the Acadians in his
“Evangeline,” and for writing “Paul Revere’s Ride.”
This foreign propaganda is supported by men like Putnam and even
American writers like Owen Wister. For the Fourth of July issue of
the London “Times” in 1919, Wister wrote an article in which he said:
A movement to correct the school books (in America) has
been started and will go on. It will be thwarted in every
way possible by certain of your enemies. They will busily
remind us that you burnt our Capitol; that you let loose
the Alabama on us during the Civil War; they will never
mention the good turns you have done us. They would spoil,
if they could, the better understanding that so many of us
are striving for.
At the meeting of the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, at Detroit, October 11, 1919, a resolution was offered
to exclude from the church hymnal “The Star Spangled Banner” and
“America.” In some of the public schools in New York copy books are
furnished the children with a picture of General Haig and embellished
with the British flag, and for some time pictures of a flag combining
the American Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack in one design were
publicly exhibited for sale all over New York City.
We read in the Prefatory Note to the revised edition of “English
History for Americans,” by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Edward
Channing (1904): “In the preparation of this revised edition, the
authors have been guided by the thought that the study of English
history in our schools generally precedes that of the United States.”
There is obviously as strong a Tory sentiment in the United States
as there was in 1776, 1779, 1808 and 1812, and the words of Thomas
Jefferson, in his letter to Governor Langdon, of New Hampshire, are
as true today as they were then:
=The Toryism with which we struggled in ‘77 differed but in
name from the Federalism of ‘99, with which we struggled
also; and the Anglicism of 1808 against which we are now
struggling is but the same thing still in another form.
It is a longing for a King, and an English King rather
than any other. This is the true source of our sorrows and
wailings.=
Again we hear the prophetic voice of Abraham Lincoln as it is borne
to us like an echo of his speech at Springfield, Ill., June 26, 1857:
The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of
no practical use in effecting our separation from Great
Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that,
but for future use. Its authors meant it to be--as, thank
God, it is now proving itself--=a stumbling block to all
those who in after times might seek to turn a free people
back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the
proneness of posterity to breed tyrants, and they meant
when such should reappear in this fair land and commence
their vocation, they should find left for them at least one
hard nut to crack=.
England’s chief propagandist is Lord Northcliffe. He owns the London
“Times,” and the latter, on July 4, 1919, clearly outlined in an
editorial the method to be pursued in turning us from our ideals and
making us forget the glorious traditions of the past. It said:
Efficient propaganda, carried out by those trained in the
arts of creating public good-will and of swaying public
opinion as a definite purpose, is now needed, urgently
needed. To make a beginning, efficiently organized
propaganda should mobilize the press, the Church, the stage
and the cinema; press into service the whole educational
systems of both countries and root the spirit of good will
in the homes, the universities, public and high schools,
and private schools.
It should also provide for subsidizing the best men to
write books and articles on special subjects, to be
published in cheap editions or distributed free to classes
interested. Authoritative opinion on current controversial
topics should be prepared both for the daily press and
for magazines; histories and text books upon literature
should be revised. New books should be added, particularly
in the primary schools. Hundreds of exchange university
scholarships should be provided.
In this manner the article continues, revealing, in defiance of all
sense of delicacy and discretion, the English attempt to undermine
the foundations of our national life by tampering with the children
of the public schools and the young men and women in the universities.
The English campaign of propaganda invades the home, the school and
the church; and has already assumed a degree of appalling boldness
in denying to America any substantial share in the issue of the
World War. Protesting against a pamphlet, “Some Facts About the
British,” said to have been published “at the suggestion of the
War Department,” District Attorney Joseph C. Pelletier, of Boston,
addressed Secretary of War Baker as follows:
I cannot believe that this pamphlet has come to your
notice, for I cannot believe that you would suggest, far
less authorize, any statement regarding the war which
unduly lionized Great Britain and absolutely omitted any
mention of the decisive share of the United States in the
triumph of the Allied Powers.
If the sinister plot, with its ramifications in our churches and
universities, our publishing houses and newspapers, is to be checked,
it will be necessary to act so as to make it unprofitable for these
interests to pursue their plans in quiet, and to seek by every means
available to arouse something of the good old spirit of 1776 that
prevailed throughout America until the advent of the late John Hay as
the first American ambassador to forget the traditions of his country
and its experiences at the hands of England.
How painful, how humiliating to every American, it should be to have
the history of our national life for 144 years declared a forgery and
to see it rewritten at the dictates of the champions of a foreign
power who repudiate the stand of their forefathers. (See “Propaganda
in the United States.”)
=Astor, John Jacob.=--“The inborn spirit of John Jacob Astor made
America what it is,” is the judgment passed upon this famous German
American by Arthur Butler Hurlbut. Popular conception of John Jacob
Astor’s personality and work is based upon a collossal underestimate
of his tremendous service in the cause of the commercial and economic
development of the United States. More interest attaches to those
things which appear adventurous in Astor’s life than to the genius
which inspired all his undertakings in pursuing unsuspected aims and
converting into accomplishments objects that seemed impossible of
accomplishment. Many picture him as a sort of Leatherstocking with an
eye to business, a hunter and trapper, boldly invading the wilderness
and making friends of the Indians, and who finally amassed an immense
fortune from the fur trade.
Truth is, only two millions represented the share of his fur trade
in the total of twenty or thirty million dollars which constituted
his fortune at the time of his death. The mythical John Jacob Astor
was a creation of those who came after him; the real one appeared
quite different to his contemporaries. His bier was surrounded by
the leading statesmen, financiers and scholars of the first half of
the nineteenth century, for they knew what today is either little
known or forgotten, that his methods were those of a true pioneer and
pathfinder.