  American School Children and English Propaganda.—The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “The notion that England was justified in throwing on America part of the expenses caused in the late war was popular in the country.... GeorgeIII, who thought that the first duty of the Americans was to obey himself, had on his side the mass of the unreflecting Englishmen who thought that the first duty of all colonists was to be useful and submissive of the mother country.... When the news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga arrived in1777, subscription of money to raise new regiments poured freely in.” It is not enough to disprove the absurd statement that the English people had no responsibility for the stamp act and the oppressions that were practiced against the American colonies, and that all these evils were the work of GeorgeIII; it is vital for the American people to recognize the danger of the ultimate aim of the Anglo-American publishers who are supplying the public schools with histories in which the English are exalted and the Germans represented as our immemorial enemies, all contrary evidence notwithstanding. (See under “Frederick the Great,” elsewhere.) Edward F. McSweeney, of the Americanization Committee of the Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, in tracing the baleful propaganda, calls attention to a Fourth of July demonstration in London in1917, during which George Haven Putnam, himself a native of London, head of one of the largest book publishing houses in this country, made the following observations: The feelings and prejudices of the Americans concerning their transatlantic kinsfolk were shaped for my generation, as for the boys of every generation that has grown up since 1775, on text books and histories that presented unhistorical, partisan and often distorted views of the history of the first English colonies, of the events of the Revolution, of the issues that brought about the War of 1812-15, and the grievances of 1861-1865. The influence of the British element in our population has proved sufficiently strong to enable the English-Americans to bring it under control and to weld it into a nation that, in its common character and purposes, is English. Text books are now being prepared which will present juster historical accounts of the events of 1775-83, 1812-15 and 1861-65. Americans of today, looking back at the history with a better sense of justice and a better knowledge of the facts than was possible for their ancestors, are prepared to recognize also that their great-grandfathers had treated with serious injustice and with great unwisdom the loyalists of New York and of New England, who had held to the cause of the Crown. It is in order now to admit that the loyalists had a fair cause to defend, and it was not to be wondered at that many men of the more conservative way of thinking should have convinced themselves that the cause of good government for the colonies I had occasion some months back when in Halifax to apologize before the great Canadian Club, to the descendants of some of the men who had in1776 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 in1861. 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 of1776, 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” in1919, 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, October11, 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., June26, 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 July4, 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 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 of1776 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 144years 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.”) |
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