Since the World War, an ardent patriotism has swept the country, resulting in a widespread investigation of the teaching and writing of history. Sponsored by various groups, the movement has gained considerable momentum, until history teaching and history textbooks are in danger of being an expression of certain religious, racial or other partisan opinions. These groups hold, in common, that American histories, as now written, neglect heroic characters in American history, especially in the Revolutionary War, and that they are distorted by a pro-British bias. Propaganda, indeed, makes strange bed-fellows. In this new praetorian guard of the temple of American patriotism are found the Hearst newspapers, an element of the Knights of Columbus and of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, and finally patriotic societies of this country.
The charge of “Anglicization,” usually enlivened by mysterious references to “British gold,” arises in part from the new trend of American historical scholarship in the last twenty-five years. Historians employing scientific methods have done much to revise the traditional ideas concerning our relations with Great Britain. Important contributions of this character have been made, for instance, by such historians as George Louis Beer, Charles M. Andrews, Herbert L. Osgood, Sydney George Fisher, and Claude H. Van Tyne.
These investigations were going forward at the same time that conscious efforts were being made by the publicists of the two countries to reveal to the two English-speaking peoples their common ties and responsibilities in the world today. Many books were printed and organizations formed to promote Anglo-American concord; among the latter, such bodies as the Sulgrave Institute, the Anglo-American League and the English-Speaking Union.
To suspicious onlookers the work of the historians in their cloisters took on the appearance of deliberate propaganda favorable to Great Britain—a suspicion, it need hardly be said, entirely unwarranted. It needed only an appeal such as that of Herbert Adams Gibbons that we solidify an amicable relationship with Great Britain through our common language, common ideals and common interests, to confirm the credulous in their suspicions.[637] Furthermore, suggestions from men like Albert Bushnell Hart that our history text-books be rewritten to encourage better international relations seemed to afford additional proof that pro-British agencies were in control of history textbooks.[638] The writings of special pleaders like Owen Wister strengthened this impression.[639] Indeed, Charles Edward Russell has gone so far as to declare that definitely planned attempts to rewrite American history textbooks, for the purpose of encouraging better Anglo-American relations, were launched as early as 1896, and have been carefully carried on since then.[640]
On the other hand, the proponents of revision, conscious of an “agitation for the reintroduction of parochial patriotism into the schools and colleges,” have entered a plea for “the truth” in school histories and for the writing and teaching of history by scholars unaffected by the demands of “politicians.”[641] To them, the true fount of patriotism does not arise from textbooks of history which are “nationalistic rather than impartial.”[642] They would seek, rather, to depict events not as “partisans” but in a “scientific spirit, with the desire to understand rather than to justify.”[643]
In 1921 the Hearst newspapers began the publication of a series of articles designed to arouse “patriotic American parents” to a realization that “the school histories now being taught to their children have been revised and in some instances wholly rewritten in a new and propitiatory spirit toward England.”[644] Since that time these articles have appeared at irregular intervals from the pen of Charles Grant Miller. There has been yeast in his statements, and to them may be attributed the origin of much of the criticism directed against history textbooks by individuals and organized groups. With titles set up in large black-faced type these articles captured the eye of those who, consciously or unconsciously, were giving heed to the feverish propaganda which has flourished since the World War. In his articles, Mr. Miller proceeded from the discussion of “United States History Revised in School Books, Belittles Revolution and Thanks England for Bestowing Liberty on America” to a treatment of “Propaganda seeks to Distort American History, British Workers are Being Backed by a Heavily Financed Machine....”[645]
Chief among the historians whom Mr. Miller would characterize as “Anglicized” are found Albert Bushnell Hart, John P. O’Hara, Everett Barnes, A. C. McLaughlin, C. H. Van Tyne, William B. Guitteau, and Willis Mason West. Charges of “Anglicization” have been brought also against C. H. Ward for his edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America and upon Helen Nicolay for her Book of American Wars. The pro-British point of view which Mr. Miller found expressed has been brought about by “intrigue and treason” and the American school histories which portray it “must be cast out if America is to remain America.”[646]
Substantially all of the criticisms of history textbooks in which Mr. Miller has indulged have related to statements regarding the Revolutionary War. He found it especially objectionable when a history like John P. O’Hara’s gives “the impression” that “the American Revolution originated not in the colonies themselves, but among the devoted friends of liberty in England,” and when “more quotation is given from Pitt than from Patrick Henry.”[647] A “wholesome desire for increased friendship and coöperation between the United States and Great Britain,” declared Mr. Miller, “creates no justification for the policy of propitiation of England through defamation of America, which offers as sacrifice upon the altar of international comity immortelles snatched from the monuments of our nation’s heroic founders.... In our own heroes and history our nation has been exceptionally blessed. They have proved unfailing sources of pride and inspiration that have prompted us as a people to stanch character, high endeavor, noble achievements and unparalleled progress.”[648]
The second article in the Chicago Herald and Examiner lay bare the alleged defects in Barnes’ textbook, where the author plays “the part of a flunky apologist to England for the independence established by our fathers,” and in which he “burlesques its world affecting results.”[649] Barnes, furthermore, Mr. Miller pointed out, ignores such patriots as “Nathan Hale, whose only regret on the British scaffold was that he had but one life to give to his country, ... Ethan Allen, Mad Anthony Wayne and the battle of Stony Point,” while, on the other hand, “there is a full page of praise for the traitor Benedict Arnold whom ‘Congress had treated unfairly.’”[650] In addition to other faults, Mr. Miller cited the statements that “the first signer of the Declaration of Independence was a smuggler,” “that the Continental Congress ‘was a scene of petty bickerings and schemings’ among ‘selfish, unworthy, short-sighted, narrow-minded, office-seeking and office-trading plotters,’ that ‘half the colonists were loyal to England’; that the rest were united in resistance only ‘because they dared not be otherwise,’ and that if in England the wise course had only prevailed against the ‘foolish’ King, ‘this great country would probably now have been a great branch of the British empire.’”[651]
Barnes was also condemned because he calls the War of 1812 “a mistake,” the burning of Washington “an act of reprisal” for the burning of buildings in Canada, and Jackson’s victory at New Orleans “a wasted battle; a needless victory.”[652] How different to Mr. Miller was “this new Barnes” from the Barnes’ Brief History of the United States which spoke “always from the American viewpoint, with American interests and sympathies at heart!”[653]
The next authors to arouse his ire were McLaughlin and Van Tyne, who with other historians were “reshaping” American history “to serve international interests under whose hypnotism of propaganda American public opinion has been goose-stepping for five years in the direction of a return to English subjection.”[654] Charged with omitting Hale, Decatur, Faneuil Hall, the Green Mountain Boys, Betsy Ross and the flag, the quartering of troops and “the British attempts to bribe,” they were declared guilty also of “strictly minimizing the patriot valor at Lexington, Bunker Hill and New Orleans.” Such omission in the school histories Mr. Miller compared with “an ancient custom to remove the viscera and brain before embalming a body.” Indeed, Mr. Miller found it extremely objectionable that the “leading founders of our liberties are characterized by McLaughlin and Van Tyne as follows: ‘It is hard to realize how ignorant and superstitious were most of the colonists of America’—p. 134; ‘Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous and hitherto unknown country lawyer’—p. 141; ‘Smuggling was so common that even a leading Boston merchant was known as ‘the Prince of Smugglers’’—p. 140; ... and ‘Adams and Hancock stole away across the fields’—p. 153.”[655]
Besides these grievances the Hearst papers objected to the omission of “such famous slogans as ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours’ and ‘Don’t give up the ship’”; and McLaughlin and Van Tyne “go further [even] than their fellows and seek to destroy these inspiring slogans by disputing their authenticity.”[656]
This attack on the McLaughlin and Van Tyne textbook provoked a protest from C. H. Ward, whose edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America the Hearst papers also had criticized. “Mr. Miller,” declared Ward, “skillfully quotes with a sneer from the McLaughlin and Van Tyne book” (regarding Patrick Henry). “Yet this book,” he asserted, “does in fact give more than usual prominence and praise to Patrick Henry: ‘Who declared with marvelous eloquence’ (p. 141); ‘With burning words he denounced the tyranny’ (p. 142); ‘Patrick Henry again electrified the Virginia leaders by his daring prophecy’ (p. 150); ‘Securing a commission and money from the Governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry’ (p. 182).” Notwithstanding this treatment of Henry, Mr. Ward averred that “Mr. Miller so quotes as to imply that the authors have slandered Henry; but the two adjectives ‘gay and unknown’ are the only two words that convey aught but praise.”[657] Further, Mr. Ward showed that, in the account of Lexington, the statement that “Adams and Hancock stole away” is taken out of its context. Ward, likewise, found that Miller has “misrepresented” Hart’s history, for he was unable to discover some of the statements attributed to that author.[658]
On November 20, 1921, the Chicago Herald and Examiner devoted an article to an attack not only upon Barnes, Hart, McLaughlin and Van Tyne, but also upon William B. Guitteau, who, too, had fallen victim to “the snobbish spirit of apology and subserviency to England.”[659] This attitude, according to Mr. Miller, “the publishers, Silver, Burdett and Company, boldly proclaim in their advertisements” in saying: “This book has been written in the light of recent events in which a new atmosphere has been created for the study of our national life.... The revolutionary war and subsequent Anglo-American difficulties hitherto distorted in our school books through an unthinking adherence to traditional prejudice, have been restated by Dr. Guitteau in their true light.”[660]
One of the objectionable points urged against Guitteau and other historians was the ignoring of Irish patriots. In large, bold-faced type Mr. Miller called attention to “the elimination of German and Irish assistance to the colonists in the Revolution, as well as the Dutch of New York and Pennsylvania, the French of Carolina and the Swedes of New Jersey and Delaware, while the help given by France is minimized and charged to selfish, scheming motives.”[661] In his earlier editions, declared Mr. Miller, Professor Hart had the “frankness to say ‘Germans, Irish, Scotch-Irish, French, Dutch, Negroes and Englishmen stood side by side in the ranks,’” but in the revised edition of 1920 “he has magically transformed so eminent a hero as Baron De Kalb from a German to a Frenchman.”[662]
“Home grown motives might be imagined for carrying back a century and a half the cancellation of friendly relations with the Germans,” was Mr. Miller’s observation, “but whence comes the motive for a sudden change in attitude toward Irish heroes of the Revolution?” Such a situation revealed to Miller a significant animus, for certainly “it is not our own country that has had the trouble with the Irish.” To him it was conceivable that hidden forces were actuating the “recent revisions,” for “by the early historians” the high regard in which George Washington held Irishmen was “glowingly recognized.”[663]
The publication of this “series of articles written for the Hearst newspapers by Charles Grant Miller ... aroused a wave of indignation all over the country,” according to the Chicago Herald and Examiner for May 14, 1922. As a result, “patriotic societies have taken up the battle and various organizations have started movements to stop such perversion of American traditions.” As an example of one who was aroused to the situation described in the articles, the Herald and Examiner published a letter from Senator William E. Borah, “who raises a clarion voice against the insidious effort to falsify the glorious story of the American fight for independence and to cheat the youth of this day of the heroic inspiration and sturdy manhood of the days of the Revolution.”[664]
Although Senator Borah did not desire “to have our histories do any injustice to Great Britain,” yet he did not want “facts concealed nor events ignored in order to satisfy those who now seem to regret that their ancestors ever came to this country.”[665] He presumed that the next step would be “an expurgated edition” of the Declaration of Independence, which would be read “with appropriate apology” on the Fourth of July “should that continue to be observed.” All of this led him to remark that in “due time some sycophantic intellectual interloper will feel constrained to urge that we withhold from our young men and women the unjust attack so long made upon the American-English gentleman known as Benedict Arnold.”[666]
Under the caption “Let United States History Teach Patriotism,” Wallace McCamant, one-time president of the Sons of the American Revolution, announced his approval of the stand taken by Charles Grant Miller. “What think you of a school history,” queried Judge McCamant, “which begins the story of the American Revolution with this sentence? ‘There is little use trying to learn whose fault it was that the war began, for, as we have seen, such a long train of events led to disagreement between England and America, that we should have to go back and back in the very founding of the colonies. As in most quarrels, the blame is laid by each party on the other.’”[667] When an author, in discussing taxation without representation declares that “there was here an honest difference of opinion,” it was evident to Judge McCamant that he “has certainly not been called of God to write American history.”[668]
To those “who say that history should not stress war,” Judge McCamant admitted that “there are important chapters in our peace history which should be adequately covered,” but he suggested that there is “nothing else” which “will grip the imagination of the young like the story of the soldier or the sailor who fights and dies that his country may be free.”[669] The inculcation of patriotism, which is the chief value in the teaching of American history in Mr. McCamant’s mind, can best be attained in setting forth “sacrifices in winning freedom.”[670]
The next angle from which Mr. Miller criticized American school histories is in “the magical transformation of King George III from a born Briton into a German.”[671] Such, he asserted appears in the 1916-17 edition of the school history by Hart, a plain evidence of “the forces of British propaganda” which “were increasing their influences to quicken an American hatred of Germany and to hurry us into war and into permanent alliance....”[672] To prove his contention regarding the nationality of King George III, he quoted the “English historical authority, Macaulay,” thus: “‘The young King was a born Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good and bad were English.’”[673]
As a result of the “many forces actively at work” Mr. Miller observed that the “Anglicized revisionists, like ten automatons worked by one will, begin to teach American school children: ‘that the American revolution was made in Germany; ...’ that ‘the American revolution was a contest between German tyranny and English freedom, although neither party in the struggle knew that this was the issue’; ....”[674] On the other hand, Mr. Miller found in John Bach McMaster’s history “an excellent summary” where “the venomous quality of English comments upon America is vividly described.”[675]
Another victim of “Anglicization” Mr. Miller held to be Matthew Page Andrews, “director of the English-Speaking Union and Anglicized author of three American school histories” whose source of information was Greg’s History of the United States, published in London in 1887.[676] It was the belief of Mr. Miller that it was Greg’s History from which Mr. Andrews adduced the conclusion that “Lincoln was controlled by fanatics and through perfidy and broken pledges forced our Civil War.”[677] In his discussion of Greg’s book, Mr. Miller failed to mention Greg’s characterization of Townshend’s work. In this latter case it would seem that Greg ought to have met with approval, for he described Townshend’s part in the Revolution as “folly,” as well as saying that Townshend “pledged himself to a series of petty customs imposts.”[678] Furthermore, he mentions Ethan Allen, Stark, Wayne, St. Clair, Putnam, Sumter and Marion, and in that regard should prove acceptable to those desiring the inclusion of heroic characters in textbooks.[679]
On October 15, 1922, the Chicago Herald and Examiner sought to expose the agencies which ranged “all the way from the cultivation of ‘more friendly relations’ to the fulfillment of the Carnegie prophecy of the Reunited States, the British-American Union and the Cecil Rhodes Design,”[680] and which were responsible for textbook revision. Besides the “elaborate and well-oiled British propaganda machine established by Sir Gilbert Parker and the late Lord Northcliffe,” Mr. Miller had discovered “at least a full half dozen of strong propaganda organizations” all of whose methods were “sinister and to the one end.” Among these were the “Sons of St. George, an old organization of British-born residents of this country” who, “within the last few years,” had “emerged from obscurity through a hard drive for increased membership and vigorous assertion of British spirit,” and who had offered “the only open opposition which the Sons of the Revolution in California have encountered in their winning fight against Anglicized school histories....” In the California case, the opposition was directed by “the American-born wife of a son of St. George and from a daughter of the American Revolution who is a member of the English-Speaking Union,” which exemplified “the favorite policy of all of these British propaganda organizations” in which they “push their American-born women to the front to do their open fighting.”[681]
The English-Speaking Union is another of the organizations of which Mr. Miller spoke. Its magazine, The Landmark, has “bitterly attacked as ‘demagogic’ and ‘narrow-minded’ the movement to restore true American history to our public schools”;—and “it arranges for the granting of degrees by English universities to American collegiates who teach to our youth the imperialistic interests of Great Britain.”[682]
The third agency for Anglicization, according to Mr. Miller, is the Sulgrave Institute “founded upon the idea that George Washington has loomed too large throughout the world ever to be belittled, and so must be claimed as an Englishman, who established in this western world English freedom.” A like fate Mr. Miller prophesied for Lincoln “for whom there is now being provided an English lineage and an English ancestral home, as a shrine where expatriate Americans may bend the sycophantic knee in foolish worship of supposed English influences that are said to have freed our slaves and saved our Union.”[683]
Other forces of like design Mr. Miller found in the “Cecil Rhodes Scholarship, the Cecil Rhodes Secret Society and the Rhodes Scholarship Alumni Association of America,” all influences for Rhodes’ dream—“the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.”[684] Of like character are “the multiform Carnegie institutions, supported by the $200,000,000 fund of the Carnegie Corporation, and designed to influence and direct the spirit and methods of the scholastic, public school and library forces of the country,” as well as the religious through the “Church Peace Union.”[685] The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and The American Association for International Coöperation are among the various influences named by Mr. Miller, which seek to “Briticize” America.
One of the chief endeavors of “all of the propaganda organizations,” according to Mr. Miller, is the substitution of the observance of Magna Charta Day, June 15, for that of July the fourth. Such an effort led him to conclude that “the international mind is a British mind throughout. While insidiously seeking to denationalize America, it is insistently striving to strengthen the nationalism of Great Britain.”[686] Mr. Miller held as chiefly responsible for “this de-Americanizing ‘dope’” Nicholas Murray Butler and “more than a score of college presidents and professors, other educators and preachers, who readily are traced into other British propaganda organizations and are officially identified with various British secret services in this country”; who through a system of pensions are “securely subsidized into keen sympathy with the Carnegie design of ‘the Reunited States—the British-American Union.’”[687]
The inclusion in American history textbooks of statements designed to show that American constitutional practices had their source in English institutions caused Mr. Miller to criticize not only Barnes, O’Hara, McLaughlin and Van Tyne, against whom he had other grievances, but also David Saville Muzzey and Willis Mason West. “Such is not American history,” he declared, “it is British propaganda,” for even an Englishman, Gladstone, has said, “The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”[688] “Such disparagement in revised school history is not mere unintentional error,” asserted Mr. Miller. “..., these and other gross alterations recently made in ten of our school histories, are a direct result of definite design and organized propaganda” conducted by “propaganda associations pussyfooting among us ... to deaden our respect for our own birthright, inoculate us with contempt for our free institutions and fit us for coercion of re-colonization.”[689]
On November 4, 1923, however, the New York American carried a retraction of an attack on West’s History of the American People which “was printed in such a way as to lead readers to believe ... that the statements [objected to by the Hearst papers] ... were made without qualification.” The American apologized for “inadvertently” publishing part of a discussion in such a way as to distort “the meaning of both paragraphs when read together.”[690]
As a result of the agitation of the Hearst newspapers the “treason texts” were being revised, according to the Chicago Herald and Examiner of April 20, 1924. Among the authors attempting to “re-Americanize” their histories were David S. Muzzey, who already had made “three mincing revisions,” Andrew C. McLaughlin and C. H. Van Tyne who have “at last submitted to the irresistible force of nation-wide protest against treason texts and have strikingly reversed their views....”[691]
However, Mr. Miller has not confined his activities solely to the publication of articles in the Hearst newspapers, but has resorted to other means for preaching his gospel. Through the agency of an organization called the Patriot League for the Preservation of American History he has endeavored to carry on his war against the “British propagandists” and “to purge the public schools of the Anglicized school histories and establish in their stead textbooks that teach the true American annals and inculcate the true American spirit.”[692] The slogan for the Patriot League is taken from Washington’s Farewell Address: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”[693] Charges against “ten” Anglicized school histories reincarnating “the spirit of Benedict Arnold” have been made by the Patriot League in a pamphlet entitled “Treason to American Tradition.” These charges have been indorsed and the accused books condemned, in formal resolutions unanimously adopted in their national conventions by the American Legion, the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Knights of Columbus, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the United Spanish War Veterans.[694] The proscribed list includes books under the authorship of Matthew Page Andrews, Albert Bushnell Hart, John P. O’Hara, C. R. Ward, David Saville Muzzey, Willis Mason West, William B. Guitteau, A. C. McLaughlin and C. H. Van Tyne, Everett Barnes, and Edwin Greenlaw. The Patriot League concludes that “the heroic history of a nation is the drum and fife music to which it marches,” and that “it makes a mighty difference whether America continues to quickstep to ‘Yankee Doodle’ or takes to marking time to ‘God Save the King.’”[695]
In commenting upon Mr. Miller’s pamphlet The New York Times declared: “Mr. Miller attempts in this pamphlet, through the quotation of isolated sentences and passages, to prove that the authors whom he criticized have no reverence for the Revolutionary leaders, preach the doctrine that the colonists had no grievance against England, suppress all the thrilling stories of valorous achievement on which our youth used to be nourished, and make no use of authorities other than British in commenting on the Revolution.
“What Mr. Miller does prove by all his toil is quite different, namely, the undenied fact that our recent textbooks dealing with the early days of the Republic have been compiled by men whose purpose, so far as they had a purpose in addition to that of supplying accurate information, has been to promote friendship between Great Britain and the United States rather than to perpetuate their ancient animosities. That is a crime in Mr. Miller’s eyes, for he holds and avows the strange belief that school histories should be different for the children of different countries....
“To argue with an upholder of that grotesque theory would be worse than waste of time. Fortunately, Mr. Miller is alone in holding it, except, perhaps, for the company of those whose hatred of England is so fierce that for them any stone is good enough to throw at her....”[696]
A desire to combat the tendency of recent textbooks to depict our relations with England from a viewpoint not violently anti-British has led an element of the Knights of Columbus to join in the movement for expurgating textbooks. Their chief cause for complaint lies in the narration of events of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and in England’s attitude toward the Federal Government during the Civil War. Joseph T. Griffin, in a pamphlet, American History Must It Be Rewritten to Preserve Our Foreign Friendships? regretfully remarks that with the present-day presentation of the Revolutionary War in our histories, “it will soon require more courage for Americans to believe the Declaration of Independence than it did for Jefferson to write it.”[697] Such a condition has arisen, according to Mr. Griffin because of the fear of exciting antagonism toward Great Britain, whereas “the only consideration which should guide the American writer of a history text-book is whether the material he is to present ... is true as to facts, ennobling as to sentiment, and stimulating to the morale of the nation; and that while we are eager to preserve friendly relationships with other nations, we are not willing to forego one iota of our national glory or consign to oblivion any part of our historical traditions.”[698]
The charge that a definite campaign of British propaganda had been carefully inaugurated, Edward F. McSweeney, one-time head of the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, set forth in a pamphlet entitled America First.[699] “According to our modern Tories in their propaganda Campaign,” declared Mr. McSweeney, “Washington and his colleagues were wrong, and only the leaders of an ignorant, criminal, and cruel mob. American independence was only a sudden thought, and not the result of long growth and development.”
In proof of the conspiracy charge the author showed by actual figures the increase in the area of the English dominions during the past three hundred years. This expansion he ascribed to the wrecking “of every nation that aspired to be her competitor for any considerable share of the world’s commerce or for equality of political power among the States of the world”; for by “intrigue, propaganda and alliance” Great Britain has “destroyed the commercial power of Spain, Holland, Denmark, France, and as a result of the great world-war, of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany.” Today, Mr. McSweeney pointed out, there remain only two nations “which are real competitors of England—Japan and the United States,” the former annexed by secret treaties and alliances, the latter, in reality, being the sole competitor.[700]
It was Mr. McSweeney’s belief that the first effort of the pro-British propagandists “to undermine the foundations of our national life” was “by tampering with the children in the public schools”; a movement which had “made substantial progress,” for “the history of the Revolution has been re-written to make it appear that the objections to a connection with England, so important a hundred years ago, have been to a large extent set aside, and that the time may come when through some application of the Federal principle ... [the English-speaking people] may come together into a vaster United States, the pathways to whose scattered parts shall be the SUBJECTED seas.”[701]
This movement, he held, had been aided by some of the great publishing houses of the United States, citing the words of George Haven Putnam, “the head of one of the largest publishing houses in the country,” in a Fourth of July speech made in London: “The feelings and prejudices of Americans concerning their trans-Atlantic kinfolk were shaped for my generation as for the boys of every generation that had grown up since 1775 on textbooks 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 issue that brought about the war of 1812-15, and the grievances of 1861-65.... Textbooks are now being prepared which will present a juster historical account of events of 1775-83, 1812-15, and 1861-65.... 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.”[702]
Some of the British proselytism, Mr. McSweeney attributed to a propagandist campaign inaugurated by Lord Northcliffe, who left “one hundred and fifty million dollars” and “ten thousand agents” in this country.[703] “Local societies should be formed in every center to foster British-American good-will, in close coöperation with an administrative committee,” Lord Northcliffe is alleged to have said. “Important articles should be broken up into mouthfuls for popular consumption, and booklets, cards, pamphlets, etc., distributed through organized channels to the public. Advertising space should be taken in the press, on the hoardings, and in the street cars for steadily presenting terse, easily read and remembered mind-compelling phrases and easily grasped cartoons that the public may subconsciously absorb the fundamentals of a complete mutual understanding.” According to Mr. McSweeney, the influence of this campaign is already evident in textbooks for primary grades “in which more than ninety per cent of the pupils are children of foreign born parents, or are themselves foreign born.”[704] Authors of such textbooks, writers like Owen Wister, Ex-President Taft, George Haven Putnam, Professor William L. Cheney, Albert Shaw, President Judson of the University of Chicago, Admiral Sims, and others are arraigned by McSweeney and charged with un-Americanism.[705] The condemnation of Wister is based, in part, on his statement that our school histories have been responsible for keeping George III’s memory green, but that “A movement to correct the school books has been started and will go on.”[706]
Of all the propagandist arguments set forth by England “the most dangerous and un-American” in the opinion of the writer is that about “Anglo-Saxon civilization.” “By dint of iteration and reiteration,” declared Mr. McSweeney, “this uncontradicted falsehood has actually brought about in the United States the subconscious acceptance of a misleading idea, which during the last fifty years has grown, until it is commonly used, yet nobody even knows what it means.... The Anglo-Saxon tradition is a pure myth. To verify it is like looking at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there.” Nor did he believe “the Anglo-Saxon impulse ... in the least responsible for the progress of the United States. It had nothing to do with the Spanish in Florida; the Huguenots in Virginia; the Swedes in Delaware and New Jersey; the Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Celts in Maryland and Pennsylvania.”[707]
Furthermore, this antagonist of Great Britain sought to controvert some of the statements which would show that American institutions sprang largely from England. He contended that never was there “a greater falsehood” than the claim that the English were the founders of the New England town meeting, for it arose from the Teutonic “folk mote”; that it was unquestionably true that there is in the United States scarcely a political or legal institution of English origin; that the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” was of Roman not English law; that the United States could not get religious liberty from England, “because religious liberty did not exist there”; that popular education, freedom of the press, the secret ballot, the vast machinery of public charitable, reformatory and poor administration were derived from other than English sources.[708] With such an exposition, Mr. McSweeney arrived at the conclusion that the part of “our legal system which is consistent with natural justice comes from Rome; the incongruous, absurd and unjust features” from England.[709]
The place of the Irish race in the making of America, Michael J. O’Brien, chief historiographer for the American Irish Historical Society, sought to establish in A Hidden Phase of American History. It proposes to set forth “Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty” and to lay bare “the heart of the Irish race in Ireland during the War of Independence as beating in sympathy with the revolted colonies in America,” to narrate the story of Irish contributions to the Revolutionary army, and to establish a place of preëminence for the Irish in the building of the Republic.[710] It runs, in its twenty-four chapters, the gamut of the history of most of the colonies, depicting the part played by the Irish. It is offered as an antidote to Bancroft, Henry Cabot Lodge, and other American historians, and concludes its narrative with a chapter on “America’s Debt to Ireland” in which is set forth the plea for American aid for Ireland in her struggle for independence.[711]
Of this book the Irish World speaks with enthusiasm: “The most repulsive snake in popular opinion is the cobra, famous in stories of East Indian life.... Yet a little animal of the ferret type can kill him in a brief fight, ... a frail but daring creature known as the mongoose.... In the historical order we have the cobra, the repulsive serpent who makes history a fountain of lies, whose fangs poison the human race for centuries, whose history of the so-called Reformation is the cobra of the past four centuries. The Anglo-Saxon history of this continent is a cobra of the same species. It has poisoned the life of the American people.... All the Anglo-Saxon writers from Bancroft on, suppressed, ridiculed where they could not suppress, mutilated where they could neither suppress nor ridicule, everything Irish in American history. The Universities of Harvard, Yale and Columbia have been conspicuous in spreading the poison, for that matter in cultivating and intensifying its virulence, as their historians are the best illustrations of the cobra’s viciousness and malignity. The Catholic faith at this moment cannot get a hearing from them.... It is pleasant to announce that the mongoose has arrived and is already at work. His name is Michael J. O’Brien ... [who] has brought out a book ... called ‘A Hidden Phase of American History.’” His first battle is with George Bancroft, “looked upon as our great historian, our most dignified, honest and truthful writer.... Saturated with the poison of the cobra George Bancroft could no more see and tell the truth about the Catholics and the Irish than Sir Edward Carson or Tom Watson,” but O’Brien “will kill the Anglo-Saxon cobra in this country. He is more important than twenty cathedrals and one million orators. He should be provided with a pension of one hundred dollars a week and let loose upon the libraries and records of the Anglo-Saxon....”[712]
During 1921 and 1922 the Knights of Columbus, acting through an Historical Commission, promoted a movement for original studies in American history by offering prizes for original research. The purpose of the society was “to encourage investigation into the origins and achievements and the problems of the United States, to interpret and perpetuate the American impulse, the impulse of the patriots who founded and who through their successors, have preserved the Republic; to promote American solidarity; and to exalt the American ideal.”[713] The session of the Supreme Assembly which launched this project was held May 28, 1921, at Chicago. According to John H. Reddin, Supreme Master, it was their “aim to enlist a commission of leading historians of diverse racial extraction and religious denominations” to prepare twenty-four pamphlets “covering critical periods in the nation’s history; the matter to be written direct from original sources,” and the pamphlets to be distributed “in millions of copies to schools and colleges, legislators and newspapers throughout the country.”[714]
The Thirty-Ninth International Convention of the Knights of Columbus, with twenty thousand delegates in attendance, met at San Francisco on August first. Among the activities which were endorsed was the movement for a “propaganda proof” history at the cost of one million dollars,[715] by which, if necessity demanded, every town in the country could be flooded with pamphlets telling “the true tale of America’s great origin and America’s greatness” and “stripped of all manner of European or Asiatic coloring.”[716]
Shortly following this announcement of the plan of the Knights of Columbus, Edward F. McSweeney, Chairman of the Historical Commission, issued the following statement: “The Knights of Columbus history movement aims at only one thing—the preservation of truth in the writing of American history. Many of the textbooks used in our schools are utterly unreliable on important phases of the nation’s story and totally disregard many cardinal events and personages. The Knights of Columbus oppose the cause of no other nation, they are simply aligning the 800,000 members of the order in the production and distribution of a straight-forward story, free from propaganda of any kind as to the origin and development of this country.”
“An attempt is even now being made,” continues the statement, “and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, announced his advocacy of it recently in London, to promote the celebration of the signing of the Magna Charta in English-speaking countries. The anniversary of the Magna Charta coming late in June, and being the object of the celebration as the basis of liberty, which it is not, would necessarily eclipse our own Independence Day, which, I believe, is the ultimate object of the movement.... The Knights of Columbus believe that the Declaration of Independence is an infinitely more important and conclusive document than the Magna Charta.” Under the compulsion of this belief they registered their opposition to “this and other forms of un-American propaganda.”[717]
In December the movement for “Americanized” histories was furthered at a meeting held at Washington, D. C., and the announcement was again made that the Knights of Columbus would offer $7500 in prizes for monographs in American history, the first prize to be $3000.[718]
According to Columbia, the organ of the Knights of Columbus, their history program was attacked with “virulence” by “certain organizations, dedicated to creating better Anglo-American relations.” Thus, from the Loyal Coalition of Boston emanated the following protest: “The obvious intention of a certain group, with the approval of the French ambassador, to rewrite the history of the United States, is an issue of the hour. Our whole educational system is seriously menaced because of the influence of certain instructors who react to aliens of hyphenated influence.”[719] The British-American Association also showed their opposition by offering “a prize to be known as the John Adams Gold Medal for the essay best setting forth the most instances of the friendship of Great Britain toward America from 1600 to 1920.” This hostility was clearly evident to the Knights in the statement of the organization: “To offset the work of the Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, whose Chairman, Edward F. McSweeney, has declared that the English people, so far as they had any voice, were substantially unanimous in their attitude, opposing the aspirations of the Colonists for freedom and backed up by the King and Parliament in continuing the fight for Colonial Liberty.”[720]
Yet not all Catholics gave unqualified endorsement to the Commission’s activities. January 1, 1924, Mr. McSweeney’s chairmanship ceased. In commenting upon the changed personnel of the Commission, The Fortnightly Review, a Roman Catholic periodical, expressed the hope that reorganization would “result in a more economical programme and one that will really advance the cause of history.”[721]
“The organization of this Commission in the first place was a most extraordinary procedure,” stated the Review. “A man whose work and training had never been in the field of history, was chosen before the members of the Commission were selected, and was given a salary that amounted to more than twice the pay of a full professor of history in our larger universities![722] When the personnel of the Commission was announced, it was found to contain the name of but one professional historian....[723] Unfortunately, the early statements appearing under the imprint of the Commission, some utterances of the Chairman, and some articles published in Columbia, were not calculated to remove the existing impression that the Commission had no constructive programme, ... and that the Chairman at least was willing to follow ‘the historical expert’ of the Hearst syndicate in the unjust, unfair, unmerited, and uncalled for attack on certain history textbooks.”[724]
In the course of setting forth their arguments the pro-Irish criticized certain textbooks in common use in the public schools. Albert Bushnell Hart’s School History of the United States was attacked because it “attempts to show that the American Revolution was not justified” by the following statements: “They [the colonists] were as well off as any other people in the world. They were not desperately oppressed,”[725] and “they enjoyed more freedom and self-government than the people in England.”[726] And again, “Thousands of good people sincerely loved Great Britain and were loyal to King George. The loyalists were harshly put down.”[727] Hart, moreover, includes statements whose effect may be “unquestionably bad” upon “the impressionable minds of the young,” according to one critic.[728]
It was also held that the “National spirit” of the pupils will suffer inevitably from such expressions of a “propaganda of palliation” as appear in McLaughlin’s History of the American Nation. “And all this means that while we speak, we shall probably always speak, of the struggle between England and America, the war that ensued had many of the features and many of the deplorable effects of a civil war.” Besides, an attempt to abase the motives of the Revolutionary patriots was plainly evident to objectors in the assertion that “Trivial offenses on the part of governments cannot justify revolution. Only oppression and serious danger can justify war. It cannot be said that the Colonies had actually suffered much. It might be even seen that the mother country was not at all tyrannical in taxing the Colonies to pay for defending them, and beyond question George III and his pliant ministers had no interest in treating the Colonies with cruelty.”[729]
Everett Barnes, too, was found culpable in assuming an “apologetic attitude” toward the Revolution in his statement: “The disputes that brought about the War were not between the Colonists and all the English at home. They were rather between the Tories and the Whigs on both sides of the sea, neighbor against neighbor. Had the great Whig party in England been in power with Edmund Burke as its leader, it would have checked the King in his foolish course.... Had there been no war, this great country would probably now be a great branch of the British Empire.”[730] Another occasion for grievance was discovered in teaching that the War of 1812 was “a mistake,” and “a case in which righteous anger overcame judgment,” when, in reality, “the events which preceded the declaration of war were infinitely more humiliating to the young nation than those which caused us to enter the World War.”[731]
When “Faneuil Hall, the cradle of liberty,” Nathan Hale, the Swedes of New Jersey and Delaware, the Dutch of New York, the Germans of Pennsylvania, the French of South Carolina, the Irish both North and South are not mentioned as a part of the Revolution or are practically ignored in the struggle for American independence, the would-be revisionists feel there is just cause for remonstrance.[732] Therefore, the Irish “solemnly protest” at “the diluted historical fluid served by Barnes, Van Tyne, McLaughlin, Hart, and others,”[733] for “Americans are not yet ready to accept a King.”[734]
GERMAN-AMERICAN AGITATION
Of similar purport has been the movement to disparage “denatured” histories instituted by the Steuben Society, the successor of the German-American Alliance. This organization has taken its name from “the man that forged the tool which overthrew British tyranny.” Its avowed purpose is to battle against “the sinister efforts that threaten to pervert historical truth and independence of thought in this fair country of ours.”[735] The membership is composed of men and women of the German race who are citizens of the United States, excluding those who were “shifters and trimmers during the War,” and “who are known to possess no race pride.”[736] The chief medium for the dissemination of information is the S. S. Bulletin. An article appearing in the issue of February 15, 1922, set forth the attitude of the Steubenites toward history textbooks, and acknowledged the indebtedness of the Society to the Hearst newspapers for exposing “the conspiracy secretly to alter United States school histories, so as to promote a British-American union.”[737] In commenting upon the charge that school histories were being edited by British propagandists, the Bulletin pointed out that “the public school is the fountain head of future citizenship. History teaching is the chief source of patriotic spirit and purpose.... A nation’s history is to its own people an essential force for national pride, morale and solidarity.”[738]
Much of the irritation of the Germans toward “de-Americanized” histories arose from the same source from which sprang the dissatisfaction of the Knights of Columbus. Their chief causes for complaint lay in the “defamation” of the nation’s “heroic characters,” the “misrepresentation” of “the just causes of the American Revolution” and of “the basic principles of the Republic,” besides “innumerable inspiring episodes in our history [being] belittled or entirely omitted” because of “the professed interest of Anglo-American amity.”[739]
“Every true American,” asserted the Steubenites, “naturally resents and resists the teachings in these books to our children that ‘the President of the Continental Congress and first signer of the Declaration of Independence was a smuggler, with no other mention of Hancock from cover to cover,’ that Jefferson was ‘deserving of a halter,’ and that Hamilton declared that ‘the people are a great beast.’”[740] And although “nine revisionists give nine different sets of causes for the American Revolution,” which are mutually contradictory and contrary to the causes stated in the Declaration of Independence, yet the Declaration continues to be “immortal” and “gives the lie to all these anglicized revisions.”[741]
In addition to the “emasculation” of many intrinsically essential historical “truths,” the pro-German controversialists found cause for complaint in “the attempt to envelop the America of today in the myth of Anglo-Saxon origin and kinship.” Such a procedure “wrongs the colonial Germans and Dutch of Pennsylvania and New York, the Swedes of New Jersey and Maryland, the French Huguenots of Carolina, the Irish of all the colonies, [and] the Jews from every clime.”[742]
A confession of kinship of interest with the Knights of Columbus movement is freely made in the acceptance of quotations demonstrating the “baleful propaganda.”[743] The German-Americans are one with the Irish-Americans in their feeling of humiliation at the thought of having “the history of our national life for one hundred and forty-four years declared a forgery,” and in seeing “it rewritten at the dictation of the champions of a foreign power who repudiates the stand of their forefathers.”[744]
It is precisely such a sentiment that influenced the American Turner-Bund, formerly the American Gymnastic Union and made up of Germans, at their annual convention in June, 1923, to endorse the movement of the Sons of the American Revolution,—a movement inaugurated “to revise history textbooks, ... with a view to eliminating or correcting alleged distortion of facts.”[745] The resolution of the Turner-Bund alleged that “many textbooks now in use contain distinctly pro-French and pro-British statements, neglecting throughout American history the work of the German people in its development.”[746] The resolution further carried the indictment of a school history which states that “Alsace-Lorraine was stolen in 1871 from France by Germany,” whereas, it was asserted, “France stole it from Germany two hundred years before.”[747]
Besides the effort of the German-Americans “to put a stop to the prevailing tendency to misuse our public schools for undermining American sentiment in favor of British colonialism,” the Steuben Society avowed as one of its purposes the desire to “foster in American children of German blood a proper pride of ancestry as a necessary basis of true American patriotism.”[748] Such is the intent of Frederick Franklin Schrader in his book “1683-1920.” His purpose is made clear by the following statement found in the preface:
“A blanket indictment has been found against a whole race. That race comprises upward of 25 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 founded 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 assertion that a charge of “German propaganda has no terrors for the author,” is also included in the preface, for “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 no 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.”[749]
To insure this “proper pride of ancestry” it is the opinion of the author that there should be given greater publicity to German contributions in the making of the United States. Among these contributions, the Germans would have it a matter of more general knowledge that the first iron works in this country were established by a German (Thomas Reuter in 1716); that the first American-printed Bible was printed by a German (Christopher Sauer in 1743); that the first paper to print the Declaration of Independence in America was the Pennsylvania Staatsboten of July 5, 1776; that it was the Germans who first called Washington “the father of his country”; that General Herkimer of Oriskany was of German extraction; that Steuben formulated the principles and regulations that governed the American army when it was created; that Germans have contributed valuable inventions; that Lincoln was of German descent; that Molly Pitcher was a German; and that of the ideals of liberty and of education the Germans were conspicuous creators.[750]
Nor would the Germans have the Americans forget such incidents as the saving by Germans of American refugees from a “bloodthirsty mob of Mexicans at the Southern Hotel, Tampico, Mexico,” through their aid in 1914,[751] the help of Germans in holding Fort McHenry in the War of 1812,[752] and that “the German element furnished nearly 200,000 men, natives of Germany” for the Northern army in the Civil War.[753]
Other agencies than the Hearst newspapers and those groups united by religious and racial bonds have interested themselves in attacking the histories used in the public schools. Most active among these censors are various patriotic organizations and individuals, notably newspaper editors. Through such forces many investigations of textbooks have been undertaken, resulting, at times, in the exclusion of the books under criticism from the public schools.