eat in Paris in October, 1914, that France had said, “England is my hereditary enemy. Henry the Fifth and the Duke of Wellington and sundry Plantagenets fought me”; and suppose England had said, “I don’t care much for France. Joan of Arc and Napoleon and sundry other French fought me”—suppose they had sat nursing their ancient grudges like that? Well, the Kaiser would have dined in Paris according to his plan. And next, according to his plan, with the Channel ports taken he would have dined in London. And finally, according to his plan, and with the help of his “army of spies” overseas, he would have dined in New York and the White House. For German madness could not have defeated Germany’s plan of World dominion, if various nations had not got together and assisted. Other Americans there are, who do not resort to the Revolution for their grudge, but are in a commercial rage over this or that: wool, for instance. Let such Americans reflect that commercial grievances against England can be more readily adjusted than an absorption of all commerce by Germany can be adjusted. Wool and everything else will belong to Mathias Erzberger and his breed, if they carry out their intention. And the way to insure their carrying it out is to let them split us and England and all their competitors asunder by their ceaseless and ingenious propaganda, which plays upon every international prejudice, historic, commercial, or other, which is available. After August, 1914, England barred the Kaiser’s way to New York, and in 1917, we found it useful to forget about George the Third and the Alabama. In 1853 Prussia possessed one ship of war—her first.
In 1918 her submarines were prowling along our coast. For the moment they are no longer there. For a while they may not be. But do you think Germany intends that scraps of paper shall be abolished by any Treaty, even though it contain 80,000 words and a League of Nations? She will make of that Treaty a whole basket of scraps, if she can, and as soon as she can. She has said so. Her workingmen are at work, industrious and content with a quarter the pay for a longer day than anywhere else. Let those persons who cannot get over George the Third and the Alabama ponder upon this for a minute or two.
Chapter VI: Who Is Without Sin?
Much else is there that it were well they should ponder, and I am coming to it presently; but first, one suggestion. Most of us, if we dig back only fifty or sixty or seventy years, can disinter various relatives over whose doings we should prefer to glide lightly and in silence.
Do you mean to say that you have none? Nobody stained with any shade of dishonor? No grandfather, great- grandfather, great-great-etc. grandfather or grandmother who ever made a scandal, broke a heart, or betrayed a trust? Every man Jack and woman Jill of the lot right back to Adam and Eve wholly good, honorable, and courageous? How fortunate to be sprung exclusively from the loins of centuries of angels—and to know all about them! Consider the hoard of virtue to which you have fallen heir!
But you know very well that this is not so; that every one of us has every kind of person for an ancestor; that all sorts of virtue and vice, of heroism and disgrace, are mingled in our blood; that inevitably amidst the huge herd of our grandsires black sheep as well as white are to be found.
As it is with men, so it is with nations. Do you imagine that any nation has a spotless history? Do you think that you can peer into our past, turn over the back pages of our record, and never come upon a single blot? Indeed you cannot. And it is better—a great deal better—that you should be aware of these blots. Such knowledge may enlighten you, may make you a better American. What we need is to be critics of ourselves, and this is exactly what we have been taught not to be.
We are quite good enough to look straight at ourselves. Owing to one thing and another we are cleaner, honester, humaner, and whiter than any people on the continent of Europe. If any nation on the continent of Europe has ever behaved with the generosity and magnanimity that we have shown to Cuba, I have yet to learn of it. They jeered at us about Cuba, did the Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck their tongues in their cheeks. Of course our fine sentiments were all sham, they said. Of course we intended to swallow Cuba, and never had intended anything else.
And when General Leonard Wood came away from Cuba, having made Havana healthy, having brought order out of chaos on the island, and we left Cuba independent, Europe jeered on. That dear old Europe!
Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation that returned to China their share of the indemnity exacted in consequence of the Boxer troubles; we alone returned our share to China—sixteen millions. It was we who prevented levying a punitive indemnity on China. Read the whole story; there is much more. We played the gentleman, Europe played the bully. But Europe calls us “dollar chasers.” That dear old Europe! Again, if any conquering General on the continent of Europe ever behaved as Grant did to Lee at Appomattox, his name has escaped me.
Again, and lastly—though I am not attempting to tell you here the whole tale of our decencies: Whose hands came away cleanest from that Peace Conference in Paris lately? What did we ask for ourselves? Everything we asked, save some repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, yes! we are quite good enough to keep quiet about these things. No need whatever to brag. Bragging, moreover, inclines the listener to suspect you’re not so remarkable as you sound.
But all this virtue doesn’t in the least alter the fact that we’re like everybody else in having some dirty pages in our History. These pages it is a foolish mistake to conceal. I suppose that the school histories of every nation are partly bad. I imagine that most of them implant the germ of international hatred in the boys and girls who have to study them.
Nations do not like each other, never have liked each other; and it may very well be that school textbooks help this inclination to dislike.
Certainly we know what contempt and hatred for other nations the Germans have been sedulously taught in their schools, and how utterly they believed their teaching. How much better and wiser for the whole world if all the boys and girls in all the schools everywhere were henceforth to be started in life with a just and true notion of all flags and the peoples over whom they fly! The League of Nations might not then rest upon the quicksand of distrust and antagonism which it rests upon today.
But it is our own school histories that are my present concern, and I repeat my opinion—or rather my conviction—that the way in which they have concealed the truth from us is worse than silly, it is harmful. I am not going to take up the whole list of their misrepresentations, I will put but one or two questions to you.
When you finished school, what idea had you about the War of 1812? I will tell you what mine was. I thought we had gone to war because England was stopping American ships and taking American sailors out of them for her own service. I could refer to Perry’s victory on Lake Erie and Jackson’s smashing of the British at New Orleans; the name of the frigate Constitution sent thrills through me. And we had pounded old John Bull and sent him to the right about a second time! Such was my glorious idea, and there it stopped. Did you know much more than that about it when your schooling was done? Did you know that our reasons for declaring war against Great Britain in 1812 were not so strong as they had been three and four years earlier? That during those years England had moderated her arrogance, was ready to moderate further, had placated us for her brutal performance concerning the Chesapeake, wanted peace; while we, who had been nearly unanimous for war, and with a fuller purse in 1808, were now, by our own congressional fuddling and messing, without any adequate army, and so divided in counsel that only one northern state was wholly in favor of war? Did you know that our General Hull began by invading Canada from Detroit and surrendered his whole army without firing a shot? That the British overran Michigan and parts of Ohio, and western New York, while we retreated disgracefully? That though we shone in victories of single combat on the