according to the latter’s biographer, dates from the time when,
after having considered Mayor Gaynor of New York and found himself
disappointed in his expectations, Colonel House decided to make
Wilson President in 1912. In the selection for the Cabinet two
prominent Texans, Attorney General Gregory and Postmaster General
Burleson, were named, and many others were by him designated for
responsible positions. It has been pointed out in certain quarters
that many of the most important measures leading up to and including
the war bear a more or less striking resemblance to those outlined
in “Philip Dru,” even to the investment of the President with almost
absolute powers. Colonel House’s residence in New York became the
calling place of foreign ambassadors, where vital questions of
State and our international relations were dealt with before they
reached the President. Count Bernstorff, former German ambassador
to the United States, testified before the Reichstag Commission
investigating the war that he handed Colonel House an important note
on peace which was never heard of afterward.
Colonel House has been called “the mysterious;” he seeks distinction
in doing his work in secrecy, rewarding his friends and punishing his
enemies in ways not readily apparent, laying out his policies without
revealing his hand and executing well-devised plans without the noise
and trumpery of cheap publicity. In this manner he is credited with
shaping the policies of the administration at the peace conference,
where he was, next to the President, the principal representative
of the United States, working congenially with Clemenceau and Lloyd
George and acting as moderator on the President in the latter’s
earlier demands for a stricter observance on the part of the Allies
of his Fourteen Points. As related in a Paris correspondence in
the New York “Tribune,” dated April 16, 1919, “President Wilson,
realizing that he had not sufficient ground for further refusing to
meet the demands of the three European allies, accepted the formula
which Clemenceau and Lloyd George had worked out for reparations and
accepted the plan which Colonel House had previously approved for the
surrender of the Saar Valley by Germany for a long period of years,
after which a plebiscite shall be held.”
A biographer of Colonel House says that the colonel’s father was
born in England and came to the United States during the Texas war
for independence against Mexico, in which he participated. Texas
having attained its independence, the elder House wanted Texas to
become a colony of England, a project which, fortunately, did not
materialize. During the Civil War, it is claimed, he acted for
England in facilitating British blockade runners. As a boy Colonel
House attended a school in England taught by the father of Lloyd
George and the friendship between the latter and Colonel House dates
back to their youth. During his stay in England he formed many close
attachments for prominent young Englishmen, and, on coming into his
father’s extensive property in Texas, he led the life of an English
country gentleman and entertained many English gentlemen of family
and fortune. His brother-in-law is Dr. Sydney Mezes, president of New
York City College, who acted as chairman of the Frontier Commission
at the Paris Peace Conference, and his son-in-law is Gordon
Auchincloss, who acted as secretary to Colonel House.
=The Humanity of War.=--About the time of the sinking of the
Lusitania, our official notes on this and other subjects in the
negotiations with Germany teemed with appeals to humanity. No such
view was accepted by England. In the British note of March 13, 1915,
Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, told the President:
“There can be no universal rule based on considerations of morality
and humanity.”
=Illiteracy.=--As a related element of interest in the study of the
war from a cultural as well as a military angle the illiteracy of
some of the contesting and neutral nations bears strongly on the
question:
France 14.1%
Belgium 12.7%
Greece 57.2%
Italy 37.0%
Portugal 68.9%
Roumania 60.6%
Russia 69.0%
Serbia 78.9%
United Kingdom 1.0%
Austria-Hungary 18.7%
Germany 0.05%
Denmark 0.0?%
Netherlands 0.08%
Prussia 0.02%
Switzerland 0.03%
Sweden 0.0?%
United States, 7.7% population over 10 years. Of this, the native
white population of native parents furnished 3.7% of the illiterates;
the native white of foreign or mixed parentage, 1.1%. The negroes are
down with 30.4% illiteracy, less than that of Italy or Greece and
several other European States engaged in the task of making the world
safe for democracy. Even our Indian population (45.3%) shows less
illiteracy than Greece, Serbia or Roumania. The illiteracy of our
white foreign-born population is recorded at 12.7%.
=Immigration.=--How much does the United States owe to immigration,
as regards the growth of population? Frederick Knapp, worked out a
table covering the period from 1790 to 1860, the beginning of the
Civil War, intended to show what the normal white population at the
close of each decade would have been as a result of only the surplus
of births over deaths of 1.38 percent each year, compared with the
result as established by the official census figures.
“Natural” Growth Census Figures
1790 3,231,930
1800 3,706,674 4,412,896
1810 4,251,143 6,048,450
1820 4,875,600 8,100,056
1830 5,591,775 10,796,077
1840 6,413,161 14,582,008
1850 7,355,422 19,987,563
1860 8,435,882 27,489,662
The natural increase of the white population in 160 years would
have been only 5,203,952, whereas it was 24,257,732, an increase of
19,053,780 over the natural growth. Statistics show that in 1790 an
American family averaged 5.8; in 1900 but 4.6. During the earlier
period each family averaged 2.8 children, in 1900 but 1.53, a decline
of nearly 50 per cent.
Wilhelm Kaufmann (“Die Deutschen im Am. Burgerkriege,”) makes
an ingenious calculation of the value of the immigration of the
nineteenth century to the U. S. in dollars and cents. Fifty years
ago, he says, a human being had a market price. An adult slave
about 1855 was valued at an average of $1,100. Estimating, for
the sake of argument, a white immigrant at the same price, the
19,500,000 immigrants for the stated period would represent a value
of $21,450,000,000; but as a white man performed three times as
much work as a slave, besides having a larger claim on life and a
much higher intelligence, a white immigrant represented four times
the value of a slave. What value, for instance, was an Ericson to
the Union army in the summer of 1862, or a Lieber, a Schurz, a
Mergenthaler or a Carnegie? But 22 percent of the total immigration
was made up of children under 15 years of age. According to the New
York Immigration authorities (1870) every German immigrant averaged a
possession of $150 cash on his arrival, representing a total value,
as regards German immigration alone, of $750,000,000. A famous
English economist says: “One of the imports of the U. S., that of
the adult and trained immigrants, would be in an economic analysis
underestimated at £100,000,000 ($500,000,000) a year.”--Thorold
Rogers, Lectures in 1888, “Economic Interpretations of History,” (p.
407). And the American, James Ford Rhodes (Vol. I, p. 355): “The
South ignored, or wished to ignore, the fact that able-bodied men
with intelligence enough to wish to better their conditions are the
most valuable products on earth, and that nothing can redound more to
the advantage of a new country than to get men without having been at
the cost of rearing them.”
Because the working conditions in Germany were exceptionally
favorable, immigration from the German Empire before the war had
reached by far the smallest stage of that of any of the leading
nations, save France, where the birthrate has been stationary
for many years. The figures for 1914 were only 35,734, while the
immigration from Greece was 35,832; Italian immigration in that year
reached a total of 283,738 and from Russia 255,660, while England
sent us 35,864, Scotland 10,682 and Wales 2,183. In 1915 only 7,799
Germans arrived, while England sent us 21,562. The money brought
by the Germans totaled $1,786,130, or $221.50 a head, while money
brought by the English totaled $3,467,458, a little over $160 a head.
German immigration was never a pauper immigration and of itself
refutes the assertion that German immigration was due to fear of
military service or political oppression.
The first German immigration from the Palatinate, 237 years ago, was
mainly due to the criminal ravages of the French under Louis XIV;
that of 1848 was incident mainly to the revolution in Baden, based
upon a longing of all thinking Germans for a united Germany, and
that of the subsequent period was the spontaneous outpouring of an
overpopulated country not yet adjusted to commercial and industrial
expansion and the great spread of German enterprise in ship-building
and manufacture. As soon as this development had reached a decisive
stage, immigration practically ceased. Those who came here obeyed a
great economic law by which every man seeks to supply an existing
vacancy for his industry; they did not come as beggars, but were
welcomed because they were needed. There was no religious oppression
in Germany, and in Prussia Frederick the Great proclaimed in the
middle of the eighteenth century the doctrine, “In my country every
man can serve God in his own way.” If immigration is an infallible
sign of the dissatisfaction of the immigrant with conditions at home
which drives him to go to another country, the fact that less than
36,000 German immigrants arrived in America in 1914 against a total
of 73,417 from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, proves that
conditions were vastly better in Germany than in the United Kingdom.
(The figures are from the “New York World Almanac” for 1916.)
Anthony Arnoux gives the following table of the total German
immigration into the United States for five years, from 1908 to 1912:
1908 17,951
1909 19,980
1910 22,773
1911 18,900
1912 13,706
The latest statistics available, made public in December, 1919, place
the total number of immigrants arriving at American ports for the
past 100 years at 33,200,103.
From Great Britain (including Irish) 24.7% 8,206,675
From Germany, 16.6% 5,494,539
From Italy, 12.4% 4,100,740
From Russia, 10% 3,311,400
From Scandinavia, 6.4% 2,134,414
For the fiscal year ending in June, 1919, 237,021 immigrants were
admitted and 8,626 were turned back, a net total of 245,647. During
the same period 216,231 immigrants left the country. The immigrants
arriving totaled a per capita wealth of $112, a total of $15,831,247.
Foreign-born soldiers serving in the army during the war were given
citizenship to the number of 128,335.
=Indians, Tories and the German Settlements.=--The descendants and
successors of those who form the very foundation of the government
of the United States, bled and died for its existence, cannot suffer
themselves to be segregated into a class of tolerated citizens whose
voices may be silenced at will. The history of the German element is
too closely interwoven with the records of the past and as an element
it is too much a part of the bone and muscle of the American nation
to remain silent when told that the history of the United States
is to be rewritten and the deeds of their forefathers are to be
forgotten for the glorification of the Tories who, with their Indian
allies, burned the homes of German settlers and dragged their women
and children into captivity.
A gruesome chapter of their endurance is supplied by the events in
New York State during the Revolutionary War, and notably those events
that transpired in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys. It was the
German element in New York State which stood the brunt of the forages
of Joseph Brant, the Indian chief, educated by Sir William Johnson
and renowned as no other Indian in the history of America for his
atrocities under the direction of his English and Tory patrons.
He began operations in July, 1778, by surprising a little settlement
of only seven families at Andrustown, Herkimer County, killing two
and dragging the women into captivity. It was followed by the attack
on the German Flats. This was a settlement of nearly 1,000 souls
with about 70 houses, protected by two forts, Fort Dayton and Fort
Herkimer. The rich harvest of summer had just been gathered when
Brant invaded the valley. Three of the four scouts sent out to report
his movements were killed by the Indians; the fourth, John Helmer,
returned the last day of August, 1778, and reported the approach of
the enemy. The inhabitants, so far as they were able, fled to the
protection of the forts with everything movable. With the approach of
darkness the next day Brant arrived near the forts with 300 Indians
and 152 Tories. He immediately set fire to the abandoned houses with
their barns, stables and other buildings and drove off the horses and
cattle without daring to attack the forts. The attack resulted in the
destruction of 63 houses, 57 barns, three flour and two saw mills,
and the loss of 235 horses, 229 head of cattle, 269 sheep and 93
oxen. Two men only lost their lives.
In the Schoharie Valley the summer of 1778 passed without any notable
events, but the Indians under Brant in June of that year destroyed
Cobelskill. The Indians lured the local company of defenders under
Captain Braun into an ambush and practically wiped it out. No less
than 23 of the men were killed, others were seriously wounded and
only six escaped. The women and children fled into the woods, from
which they were able to watch the Indians set fire to their homes and
barns. Brant here did not follow up his success, but returned to the
Susquehanna, where he and his loyalists wrought the fearful historic
carnage among the settlements in the Wyoming Valley, and in July
attacked the Mohawk Valley settlements.
=About this time the English government offered a prize of $8 for
every American scalp.= In consequence of this barbarous edict, the
border war, which had so far been mainly conducted between regular
military forces, degenerated into a series of savage melees. Indians
and Tories sought to bring in as many scalps as possible, and
murdered children, mothers and old men in order to earn the promised
reward of eight dollars. More than one German settler found, on
returning home from his fields in the evening, his family butchered,
wife and children lying scalped and mutilated in their dwellings or
in front of their doorsteps, their skulls crushed if the scalping
process was too slow. Scalping became a recognized industry and was
conducted for business.
In the evening, after a successful raid, the Indians would stretch
the scalps on sticks to dry during the night, while the captured
relatives, bound hand and foot, were compelled to witness the
revolting process, exposed to a similar fate at the least betrayal of
grief, or doomed to suffer a slow death by torture from fire.
An entire bundle of dried scalps, amounting to 1,062 in number,
taken by the Seneca Indians, fell into the hands of a New England
expedition against the Indians. It was accompanied by a prayer and
a complete inventory addressed to the British Governor, Handimand.
There were eight items, as follows:
Lot 1: 43 scalps of soldiers of Congress killed in
battle. 62 scalps of farmers killed in their houses.
Lot 2: 92 scalps of farmers killed in their houses
surprised by day, not by night, as the first lot.
The red color, applied to the hoops of wood, which
were used to stretch the scalp, indicated the
difference.
Lot 3: 97 scalps of farmers killed in their fields,
different colors denoting whether killed with
tomahawk or rifle ball.
Lot 4: 102 scalps of farmers, mostly young men.
Lot 5: 88 scalps of women, those with blue hoops cut
from the heads of mothers.
Lot 6: 193 scalps of boys of different ages killed with
clubs or hatchets, some with knives or bullets.
Lot 7: 121 scalps of girls, large and small.
Lot 8: 122 scalps of various kinds, among them 29
babies’ scalps, carefully stretched on small white
hoops.
The accompanying prayer was worded as follows:
Father, we wish that you send these scalps to the Great
King that he may look at them and be refreshed at their
sight--recognize our fidelity and be convinced that his
presents have not been bestowed upon a thankless people.
It was written by James Crawford (spelled Craufurd), January 3, 1782,
from Tioga, seeming to indicate that most of the scalps came from the
New York frontier. The information is based on Campbell’s “Annals of
Tryon County,” pp. 67-70 (appendix).
During 1779 the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys were not molested. In
order to punish the Indians for their atrocities in the Wyoming
Valley, as well as the western part of New York, Washington had
induced Congress to fit out an expedition against the Indians under
Sullivan. In August, 1779, General Sullivan and his aide, General
Clinton, invaded the valley with 5,000 men, moved against the Six
Nations and devastated their territory, crushing them August 29 at
Newton, near Elmira, and pursuing them as far as the Genesee Valley,
where he destroyed more than forty of their villages. The lack of
provisions drove the Indians and their Tory friends into Canada,
where they remained quiescent until 1780.
But Sullivan’s course had lacked the requisite energy and, while they
had suffered severely, the Indians were by no means discouraged, but,
on the contrary, filled with bitter resentment, and as early as the
spring of 1780 they reappeared in New York and resumed their former
raids.
On April 3 they surprised Riemenschneider’s Bush, a few miles north
of Little Falls, burned the flour mill and carried off nineteen
prisoners, among them John Windecker, George Adler, Joseph Neumann
and John Garter. The latter died from mistreatment; the others were
taken to Canada, but released when peace was restored.
During a scouting expedition commanded by Lieutenant Woodworth of
Fort Dayton the Americans came into contact with Indians double their
number. A fierce hand to hand conflict ensued and only 15 of the
Germans escaped; several were taken prisoners and Woodworth fell with
more than half his men, who were later buried in a common grave on
the spot.
This encouraged the Indians to new atrocities, as this style of
warfare was most to their liking. No settler was henceforth safe from
surprise and attack; he slept with his gun beside him and at the
least sound bounded from his bed to be prepared and to sell his life
at least as dearly as possible. Now and then more extensive raids
occurred. Brant was the soul and inspiration of every enemy movement.
His real purposes were always disguised by skilful manouvers. His
spies were everywhere and he was always well informed of everything
going on in the valley. He would pretend to attack one place while,
in reality, reserving his blow for another, thus keeping the settlers
in a constant state of terror and doubt.
In this manner he learned, toward the end of July, 1780, that General
Clinton had sent the troops in Canajoharie to Fort Schuyler for
the protection of the stored supplies at that place, and on August
2, at the head of 500 Indians and Tories, suddenly hurled himself
upon Canajoharie and instituted a perfect bloodbath. No effective
resistance could be rendered, as the entire male population capable
of bearing arms was absent. Sixteen men remained dead where they
had fallen, 60 women and children were taken prisoners, the church,
63 houses, with their barns and stables, were reduced to ashes,
upward of 300 cattle were killed or driven off. All the agricultural
implements and tools were lost, so that the survivors were even
prevented from gathering their crops ripening in the fields. The
fate of Canajoharie was impending over the heads of every other
settlement, and nowhere was there the least hope of assistance or the
least prospect of peace and quiet.
It would be tiresome to enumerate the many Indian attacks on German
settlers in the valley, and these examples out of innumerable
instances of heroic deeds (see “Schell”) performed by our German
ancestors must suffice.
The frontier history of our country abounds in such examples down to
the period of the Civil War, when the Germans of New Ulm, Minnesota,
again, practically for the last time as settlers, were exposed to
Indian massacres in their march to extend our far-flung battle
line of civilization into the regions of the primeval wilderness.
This border history is dominated by the names of the German, Dutch
and English race. No Frenchmen, Russians, Italians or any of the
races of southwestern Europe have any share in the reduction of
the forests and prairies to the spirit of American sovereignty.
French and Spanish settlements remained always a thing apart with
never diminishing attachments to Europe, and before and after the
Revolution the French were our enemies.
=Inventions.=--Among the many evidences of German moral and
intellectual obliquity cited to justify our indignation was their
lack of inventive genius, Prof. Brander Matthews in particular
alleging that the Germans had contributed nothing to making possible
the automobile, the aeroplane, the telephone, the submarine, the art
of photography, etc.
The aeroplane, the automobile and the submarine were each made
possible by the invention of the gas engine, and the gas engine was
invented by Gottlieb Daimler. By combining Lillienthal’s “glider”
with Daimler’s gas engine, the aeroplane became feasible. The first
employment of the modern gas engine was by Daimler in running a
motorcycle.
Wilhelm Bauer, a Bavarian corporal, in 1850 constructed a submersible
craft at Kiel, which though it eventually came to grief, was
practically operated and served to spread terror in the Danish navy,
which discreetly withdrew from its blockading operations. It was
equipped with torpedoes but was navigated by manual operation, no
other power being available at that early period. (Boston Transcript.)
The first man to speak over a wire with the aid of electric power
and to call his instrument a “telephone,” was Philipp Reis, of
Frankfort. In 1868 the inventor wrote as follows: “Incited thereto by
my lessons in physics in the year 1860, I attacked a work begun much
earlier concerning the organs of hearing, and soon had the joy of
seeing my pains rewarded with success, since I succeeded in inventing
an apparatus by which it is possible to make clear and evident the
functions of the organs of hearing, but with which one can also
reproduce tones of all kinds at any desired distance by means of the
galvanic current. I named the instrument ‘telephone.’” In Manchester,
before the Literary and Philosophical Society, Reis’ telephone was
shown in 1865 by Professor Cliften. The invention was however too
soon for the world. To Reis’ great disappointment, the Physical
Society of Frankfort took no further notice of the invention, the
luster of which shone upon them. Other societies treated it as a
scientific toy. The Naturalists’ Assembly, including all the leading
scientific men of Germany, had, indeed, welcomed him at Giesen; but
too late. His sensitive temperament had met with too many rebuffs,
and the fatal disease with which he was already stricken told upon
his energies. In 1873 he disposed of all his instruments and tools to
Garnier’s Institute. To Herr Garnier he made the remark that he had
shown the world the way to a great invention which must now be left
to others to develop. On January 14, 1874, he was released by death.
In December, 1878, a monument was erected to him in the cemetery of
Friedricksdorf with the inscription under a medallion portrait: “Here
rests Philipp Reis, born January 7, 1834; died January 14, 1874. To
its deserving member, the Inventor of the Telephone, by the Physical
Society of Frankfort-on-Main. Erected 1878.” (See “Philipp Reis,
Inventor of the Telephone; a Biographical Sketch with Documentary
Testimony, Translation of the Original Papers of the Inventor and
Contemporaneous Publications,” by Sylvanus Thompson, B. A. DSc.,
Professor of Experimental Physics in University College, Bristol.)
The first modern photographic lens was invented by J. Petzval,
of Vienna; the rectilinear lens by Steinheil; the Jena glass and
anastigmatic lens by Abbe and Schott, of Jena, Prussia.