commerce independent of England by getting around the English
middleman in New York for the disposal of his products and shipping
direct to the London market. It was he who opened the ports of China,
then the foremost trading country of the Orient, to the American
ships, by securing this privilege direct from the East India Company.
It was Astor who made possible trans-continental intercourse and who
opened the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the founding of
Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River. It was at the cost of a
fortune, it is true, but, with a spirit of enterprise which remained
unrivaled for sixty years after he had blazed the way. Knowledge is
power; and Astor, equipped only with an education such as a village
school afforded, had a genius for imbibing knowledge from every
source and direction, and then to employ it to the full bent of his
exceptional ability.
His life (“Life and Ventures of the Original John Jacob Astor,” by
Elizabeth L. Gebhard, Bryan Pub. Co., Hudson, N. Y.) was crowded
with anecdotal incidents of his ability and manner of gathering
information, always in the form of confidential chatter, or a simple
plying of questions. In this he was materially aided by a winning
personality, an open manner and inherent modesty, characteristics
which clung to him even after he had become one of the leading and
most influential figures in the country, and which remained with him
until his death. He was a man of natural nobility, who achieved great
results during his life-time and left his descendants to complete
what he had no time to complete himself.
The author quoted, who is a great granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. John
Gabriel Gebhard, pastor of the German Reformed Church in Nassau
Street, New York, during the Revolution, and who was driven out of
his pulpit through the machinations of the influential Tories then in
New York, and forced to preach in Claverack in Van Rensselaer County,
on the Hudson, declares that however fondly attached Astor was to
his adopted country, he never abandoned certain ideals instilled in
him in the old German home and of which neither his experiences nor
the radical changes surrounding one so young could ever divest him,
ideals translated into German thoroughness, German love of industry
and efficiency and German honesty, judgment and foresight, confidence
and the guiding principle that knowledge is power.
He enjoyed the friendship of many eminent men, and was very intimate
with Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, at the suggestion of
the former leaving $400,000 to found the Astor Library in New York
City.
He was born in Waldorf, near Heidelberg, Germany, came to New York
at the age of twenty with a few musical instruments, which he sold
and the proceeds of which he invested in furs. He died March 29,
1848. His descendants only in part remembered the racial origin of
the founder of their fortune, and one of them expatriated himself
and in December, 1915, was made a baron by the King of England in
recognition of his loyalty to the British Crown.
=Titled Americans.=--The correspondent of the New York “Evening
Post,” writing from Paris after the armistice, commented on the power
of propaganda through the medium of decorations bestowed on Americans
by some of the foreign governments. The war has assuredly added a
long list to the roll of titled Americans, Knights of the Garter and
of the Bath and Chevaliers and Commanders of the Legion of Honor.
Except Secretary Daniels and former Senator Lewis, practically all
accepted the dignities with which they were invested at the hands of
royalty. The cross of the Legion of Honor was established by Napoleon
and historically is an imperial decoration.
Prominent among those who had knighthood conferred upon them at the
hands of the King of England were General Pershing, General Dickman,
former Ambassador James W. Gerard, Oscar Straus, Col. C. Cordier,
Brigadier General C. B. Wheeler and Major General George W. Goethals
(Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George).
Lieutenant General Robert L. Bullard was decorated by the King of
Belgium with the Order of Leopold and made a Commander of the Legion
of Honor. General Joseph H. Kuhn, former military attache at Berlin
with the American embassy, was made a Commander of the Legion of
Honor. James M. Beck, a famous Wall Street corporation lawyer, was
made “a Bencher,” an honor never before bestowed on an American, and
he also received the Order of the Crown from the King of Belgium;
Alfred C. Bedford, chairman of the board of directors of the Standard
Oil Company, was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; Lieutenant
Laurenc C. Welling of Mount Vernon received the order of a Chevalier
of the Crown of Belgium; the Legion of Honor Cross was conferred on
Dr. William T. Manning, rector of Trinity Church, New York; Otto H.
Kahn was appointed by the King of Italy, Commander of the Crown of
Italy, as was Major Julius A. Adler; J. M. Nye, chief special agent,
in charge of King Albert’s train in the United States, was given
the order of Chevalier of the Order of Leopold; Elizabeth Marbury
was decorated with the Medal of Queen Elizabeth of Belgium “in
recognition of services rendered to Belgium since 1914.”
Others named to be Knights Commanders by the King of England were
Brigadier General George Bell, Jr., Major General William Lassiter,
Brigadier General John L. Hines and Brigadier General Charles H.
Muir; Commanders of the Order of the Bath, Brigadier General Malin
Craig and Brigadier General Harry A. Smith; Commanders of the Order
of St. Michael and St. George, Col. John Montgomery, Col. David
H. Biddle, Col. William P. Wooten, Col. Horace Stebbins. Several
American naval officers were “promoted” and nominated in the Legion
of Honor.
Admiral Benson promoted to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion,
while Admiral Mayo and Rear-Admirals Sims and Wilson are advanced
to the grade of Grand Officer. Rear-Admirals Gleaves, Usher, Long,
Griffin, Welles, Taylor and Earle become Commanders of the Legion.
Dr. Henry van Dyke, former American ambassador to the Netherlands,
and Alexander J. Hemphill were made Chevaliers of the French Legion
of Honor.
Companion of the Order of Bath--Major General William L. Kenly.
Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George--Brigadier
General William Mitchell, Brigadier General George S. Diggs, Colonel
Walter Kilmer and Major Harold Fowler.
The widow of Col. Robert Bacon, who fell in action, was invested
with the insignia on behalf of her husband of the order of British
knighthood; Edward R. Stettinius was made a Commander of the Legion
of Honor; the Order of the Crown was conferred on Elliot Wadsworth of
Boston; Mrs. James Hamilton Lewis received a French decoration; Jacob
A. Riis received the order of Danneborg from the King of Denmark.
This list is only a partial one of Americans distinguished in the
manner indicated, which prompted Arthur Brisbane in his column in the
New York “American” to observe:
We shall have our little titled class in America, thanks
to the British King’s action. General Pershing is now “Sir
John”--in England, anyhow, and here if he chooses. Our
General Dickman, commander of the Third Army, is made a
Knight Commander of the Bath. He will be “Sir Joseph” and
his wife “Lady Dickman.” Those that “dearly love a Lord” or
a Knight are not all English.
In England such men as Gladstone, Carlyle and others
refused any title, setting too high a value upon their own
dignity. Some American soldiers have missed an opportunity
to take democracy seriously.
=Atrocities.=--It is easily conceivable that had Germany been invaded
early in the war by the joint world powers, instead of the reverse,
there would have been a decided sentiment in favor of Germany
instead of an increasing hatred which in a short time was extended
to people of German ancestry in the United States; it held them
morally responsible for the alleged atrocities of the German armies
in Belgium. When a paper like the New York “Sun” holds that “the
Germans are not human beings in the common acceptation of the term,”
it cannot avoid the responsibility which that verdict imposes on
every person of German lineage in America. It is therefore a matter
of duty to investigate the testimony of responsible persons whether
the Belgian atrocities had any existence in the light in which they
were presented. The administration shares this responsibility in
having steadfastly ignored demands for the publication of the report
on Belgian atrocities made by the British government early in the war
and transmitted to the State Department by Ambassador Page at London.
These atrocities were alleged to consist of cutting off of hands of
Belgian children, cutting off tongues, of mutilating the breasts of
women, of outraging nuns and violating nurses, crucifying soldiers,
etc.
Now and then a conscientious voice was heard out of the universal cry
of accusation such as represented by the following self-explanatory
letter addressed to the New York “Evening Post:”
To The Editor of the “Evening Post:”
Sir: Every man who has had a connection with the honorable
British journalism of the past ought to thank you for
your just and moderate rebuke of the pretended censorship
which has passed off such a mountain of falsehoods on the
public of both hemispheres. I suppose I am the Doyen of
the foreign editors of London, and well I know that under
Gladstone and Beaconsfield it would have been impossible to
find either writers or censors for the abominable fictions
which have been spread in order to inflame the British
masses against their German opponents. The tales of German
officers filling their pockets with the severed feet and
hands of Belgian babies, and German Catholic regiments
deliberately destroying French Catholic Cathedrals, would
decidedly not have been accepted by any editors of the
“Times” or “Morning Post” in the days of Queen Victoria.
The worst part of these infamous inventions has been that
they have stirred up the blind fury of the English populace
against tens of thousands of inoffensive and useful
foreigners who have done nothing but good in a hundred
honest professions, and who are now, in the midst of savage
threats and insults, torn from their industrious homes and
thrust into bleak and miserable prisons without a single
comfort on the brink of the wintry season. The spectacle is
a hideous one, and the military censorship which has spread
the exciting calumnies has gained no enviable place in
truthful history.
F. Hugh O’Donnell.
Formerly foreign editor on the “Morning Post,” “Spectator,”
and other leading journals.
Melville E. Stone, general manager of the “Associated Press,” in an
address before the Commercial Club of St. Louis, early in 1918, as
reported in the St. Louis “Globe-Democrat,” of March 25, 1918, among
other things made the following statement:
One of the many rumors which I have investigated since the
beginning of the war is that “the hands of Belgian children
have been cut off.” This is not the truth. Aside from all
other proof, a child whose hands had been cut off would die
if not given immediate medical attention; any surgeon or
physician will bear me out in this.
The rumor was given currency by pro-Germans in this
country, I believe, because it was so easy to deny it; they
could assume on the strength of the proof of that denial
that all other atrocities, of which there were innumerable
instances, could be denied.
I have investigated forty or fifty of such stories, and in
every case have found them untrue. One of these statements
came from the wife of a leading banker in Paris. She was
asked where she had seen the child, and mentioned a certain
railway station. Asked if she had seen the child, she
replied she had seen a little girl with her hands wrapped
up. She did not know the little girl. In reply to another
question she admitted she had been told the child’s hands
had been cut off by Germans by a woman who stood on the
platform near her. She had never seen the woman before or
after, and did not know her or know her name.
“There is a little band of Catholic priests,” he said, “who
have been going into Belgium and Holland and hunting out
children who have lost one or both parents or in the great
excitement have become separated from their parents. They
informed me in a letter that they had taken between 5,000
and 6,000 children from these countries and found homes for
them, and that they never had seen such a case and didn’t
believe they existed.”
On December 16, 1917, the Rev. J. F. Stillimans, a pupil of Cardinal
Mercier, director of the Belgian Propaganda Bureau in New York,
made a similar statement, singularly assigning the same reasons for
the currency of the reports, namely, that they were inspired by
“Germans.” He said:
I believe that the rumors as to mutilated children being
in this country are started and circulated by the Germans
themselves for the sake of being able to declare them
erroneous and to claim victoriously, though illogically,
that all other accusations are to be judged untrue, since
in this particular case no proof is forthcoming.
Because the proof was not forthcoming, the campaign was abandoned,
thus leaving in the lurch a great many supposedly honorable persons
who had sworn to “the truth of what they had seen with their own
eyes.”
B. N. Langdon Davies, an Englishman, speaking at Madison, Wis., as
reported under date of December 5, 1919, said among other things,
that the public had been fed on a great deal of misinformation, and
that most of the German atrocities were manufactured by Allied press
agents for the purpose of stirring up hate.
The London “Globe” of November 1, 1915, said:
In regard to the stories about German war atrocities, which
are as mythical as the Russians in France, the “Globe”
has received numerous letters. Those who have until now
given credence to these stories must realize that reports
concerning atrocities which were never committed will tend
to shake confidence in the accuracy of reports concerning
innumerable barbarities which have been committed. These
reports are still credited in many circles, and what is
the result when investigations are instituted? It can
be expressed in one sentence which an official of the
Committee on Belgian Refugees stated to a reporter of the
“Globe” today:
“We have not seen a single mutilated Belgian refugee in
this country, nor have we found anyone who had ever seen
one.”
The following extract is from the “Universe,” London:
A correspondent writing from Amsterdam states that a friend
of his, a Catholic, who has visited many convents in
Belgium with the object of testing stories of ill-treatment
of nuns, makes the following statements. After careful
examination it is evident that, with the exception of one
or two isolated instances of rough treatment, Catholic
nuns have nowhere suffered violence; on the contrary,
this witness cites many examples of humane and excellent
behavior on the part of the Germans, both officers and
men. It is not to be assumed from the above that the
gentleman quoted has made an exhaustive examination of all
the convents in Belgium, but his evidence is noteworthy
since he explicitly denies, on the authority of the nuns
themselves, the stories of violence that were spread abroad
regarding two convents, one of which was at Malines and the
other at Blaunpal.
John T. McCutcheon, special war correspondent of the New York “World”
and Chicago “Tribune,” made this declaration in September, 1914:
In that time from Louvain to the French frontier at
Beaumont, there has not been a single instance of wanton
brutality which has come under my observation. The widely
disseminated stories of German atrocities were found to
be groundless, and I am sincerely convinced, after my
association and the observation of the officers and private
soldier of the German columns with which I have traveled,
that no army could go through a hostile country with fewer
exhibitions of brutality.
In a special dispatch to the New York “Times,” dated London, October
16, 1914, Irvin S. Cobb, writes:
In all my travels in the theater of war I have seen no
atrocities committed by either side. I have seen men led
away to execution, but only after thorough and ready
justice of a drumhead court martial had been administered.
Germany is full of stories of German Red Cross nurses with
their breasts slashed by Belgians.
A highly important witness in this connection is Emily Hobhouse,
the well-known English philanthropist and writer. In October, 1916,
Miss Hobhouse wrote an article for a British periodical, giving her
impressions of her visit to Belgium. She emphasized her astonishment
at seeing so little of the terrible devastation which she had been
led, by English newspaper reports, to expect. From her experience
in the South African war she was well aware that soldiers rule with
fire and sword, but she found nothing in Belgium to compare with the
devastation of South Africa. While but 15,000 houses out of a total
of 2,000,000 had been destroyed in Belgium, the houses of 30,000
farmers had been destroyed in the Boer war out of a relatively much
smaller total, and whole cities and towns with their schools and
churches had been made level with the ground. Even in cities like
Liege and Antwerp, where the fighting had been fierce, she could
discover no evidence of any extraordinary destructiveness on the part
of the Germans, and the conditions in Louvain, which she had pictured
as a place of ruins, fairly astounded her.
In May, 1915, on his return from Europe, Ex-Mayor and
Ex-Representative McClellan of New York, gave out a statement
correcting the view so prevalent in American circles that Belgium was
devastated.
The following correspondence will speak for itself:
Rev. J. F. Matthews, Glossop Road Baptist Church, Sheffield.
Dear Sir:--A correspondent informs us that on Sunday
morning you stated in the course of a sermon delivered in
Wash Lane Church, Latchford, Washington, that there is a
Belgian girl in Sheffield with her nose cut off and her
stomach ripped open by the Germans and that she is still
living and getting better. I am anxious to investigate
stories of German atrocities and should be grateful if you
could send particulars to me by which your statement could
be authenticated. Faithfully yours,
A. FENNER BROCKWAY,
Editor of “Labor Leader.”
The Editor the “Labor Leader.”
Dear Mr. Brockway: I enclose our consul’s letter, which I
have just received. I am writing a letter to my old church
at Latchford, to be read on Sunday next, contradicting
the story which I told on what seemed to be unimpeachable
authority. I am glad I did not give the whole alleged facts
as they were given to me. With many thanks for your note
and inquiry, I am, yours sincerely,
JOHN FRANCIS MATTHEWS,
March 12, 1915.
(Enclosure.)
Dear Mr. Matthews: Replying to your letter of the 9th
inst., enclosing a letter which you have received from the
“Labor Leader,” although I have heard of a number of cases
of Belgian girls being maltreated in one way or another,
I have on investigation not found a particle of truth in
one of them, and I know of no girl in Sheffield who has
had her nose cut off and her stomach ripped open. I have
also investigated cases in other towns, but have not yet
succeeded in getting hold of any tangible information.
Yours very truly,
A. BALFAY,
Consulat du Royanne de Belgique.
District War Refugee Committee for Belgians.
March 11, 1915.
Horace Green, a war correspondent, who spent many weeks in Belgium
during the early stages of the war, in his book, “The Log of a
Noncombatant,” issued by the Houghton Mifflin Company, devotes the
last chapter to a discussion of atrocities. Concluding that the
stories of atrocities have been exaggerated a hundred fold, Mr. Green
says:
The reports of unprovoked personal atrocities have been
=hideously exaggerated=. Wherever one real atrocity has
occurred, it has been multigraphed into a hundred cases.
Each, with clever variation in detail, is reported as
occurring to a relative or close friend of the teller. For
campaign purposes, and particularly in England for the sake
of stimulating recruiting, a partisan press has helped
along the concoction of lies.
In every war of invasion there is bound to occur a certain
amount of plunder and rapine. The German system of reprisal
is relentless; but the German =private as an individual
is no more barbaric= than his brother in the French, the
British, or the Belgian trenches.
In the “Atlantic Monthly” for October, 1917, Prof. Kellogg, of
the American Belgian Relief Commission, while severely arraigning
Germany’s treatment of Belgium, expressly states that he came across
no instance of Belgian children with their hands cut off or women
with breasts mutilated.
Ernest P. Bicknell, Director of Civilian Relief, American Red Cross,
in an article in “The Survey” in 1917, writes as follows:
The world is familiar with stories of the atrocities
charged against the German army in Belgium. In our travels
in Belgium many of these stories came to our ears. In time
we came to feel that a fair consideration of these reports
required a careful discrimination between the conduct of
individual German soldiers, and those operations carried on
under the direction of army officers in accordance with a
deliberately adopted military policy.
Approaching this subject in accordance with this idea, we
should classify the stories of mutilations, violations of
women, killing of women and children, etc., as belonging
in the category chargeable against individuals of reckless
and criminal character, who when opportunity offers, will
gratify their lawless passions. The stories of individual
atrocities in Belgium, which have shocked the world, we
found difficult to verify. While it is probable that such
atrocities were occasionally committed, I personally came
in contact with no instance of that character during my
travels about Belgium; nor did I discuss this subject with
any person who had himself come in contact with such an
instance.
In my opinion the verdict of history upon the conduct of
the German army in Belgium will give little heed to these
horrifying stories of individual crime.
Testimony along the same line is furnished by Father Duffy, chaplain
of the 165th Infantry; the War Refugee Committee in London, George
Bernard Shaw, General Pershing, General March and many others of
equal standing, and furnishes an array of evidence that is strangely
opposed to that of Mrs. Harjes, the wife of the partner of J. P.
Morgan, that she personally saw Belgian children with their hands
cut off, and of Cardinal Mercier, who stirred the heart of humanity
when he declared that “forty-nine Belgian priests were tortured and
put to death by the Germans during the occupation.” It is a matter
of record, however, that General Bissig, Governor General of Belgium
during the occupation, forbade the Belgians to keep song birds that
had been bereft of their eyes to make them sing better. The order
concludes: “The wilful blinding of birds is an act of cruelty which I
cannot under any circumstances tolerate.”
Five reputable American correspondents on September 6, 1914,
after tracing the German army in its invasion of 100 miles, sent
a message to the American people that “we are unable to report a
single instance (of atrocities) unprovoked.... Everywhere we have
seen Germans paying for purchases and respecting property rights as
well as according civilians every consideration.... To the truth
of these statements we pledge our professional and personal word.”
The statement was signed by James O’Donnell Bennett and John T.
McCutcheon, of the Chicago “Tribune;” Roger Lewis, of the Associated
Press; Irvin S. Cobb, of the “Saturday Evening Post,” and Harry
Hansen, of the Chicago “Daily News.”