"1683-1920". Frederick Franklin Schrader
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.
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.
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