Chapter I (1)

“The Germans were among the earliest and the most numerous of American settlers. The Anglo-Saxons are the acknowledged masters of the earth. The bulk of the early immigrants were of these two stocks. Examine the matter from any angle, and it is apparent that the American people are the direct, immediate descendants of world empire builders.

“The American colonies were all settled by British, French, Germans, Spanish and other inhabitants of the north and west of Europe. The central and western Europeans played no part in the early history of the colonies. Colonial ancestry means the ancestry of the world’s conquering peoples.

“Immigration during most of the nineteenth century was from the same portion of Europe. The immigration records (kept only since 1820) show that between that year and 1840 the immigrants from Europe numbered 594,504, among whom there were 358,994 from the British Isles [including, of course, the Irish--Editor] and 159,215 from Germany, making a total from the two countries of 518,209, or 87 per cent. of the immigrants arriving in the 20-year period. During the next 20 years (1840-1860) the total of immigrants from Europe was 4,050,159, of whom the British Isles furnished 2,385,846, and Germany 1,386,392, making for these two countries 95 per cent. of the whole. Even during the 20 years from 1860 to 1880, 82 per cent. of the immigrants to the United States from Europe hailed from the British Isles and from Germany. During the most of the nineteenth century European immigration was overwhelmingly British and German.

“Nearly nine-tenths of the early immigrants to the United States came from these countries. They and the countries immediately adjoining them furnished practically all of the men and women who settled in North America from the earliest days of colonization down to 1880--the beginning of the last generation. The American race stock is built around the stock of Great Britain and Germany.”--Prof. Scott Nearing.

(See “The German Element in American Life,” elsewhere.)

Whatever racial prejudice and political bias may attempt to do, philosophers and thinkers know that from the German race emanated the ideals of freedom and personal liberty which is the heritage of the whole world. To that great French thinkers, Montesquieu, Guizot and others have candidly testified, as have Englishmen, such as Hume and Carlyle. In describing the battle of Chalons in his standard work, “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” Prof. E. S. Creasy says:

In order to estimate the full importance of the battle
of Chalons we must keep steadily in mind who and what
the Germans were and the important distinction between
them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman
Empire; and it is to be understood that the Gothic and
Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. Now,
in two remarkable traits the Germans differed from the
Sarmatic as well as from the Slavic nations, and indeed
from all those other races to whom the Greeks and Romans
gave the designation of barbarians. I allude to their
personal freedom and regard for the rights of men; secondly
to the respect paid by them to the female sex and the
chastity for which the latter were celebrated among the
people of the North. These were the foundations of that
probity of character, self-respect and purity of manners
which may be traced among the Germans and Goths even
during pagan times, and which, when their sentiments were
enlightened by Christianity, brought out those splendid
traits of character which distinguish the age of chivalry
and romance. (See Prichard’s “Researches Into the Physical
History of Man.”) What the intermixture of the German stock
with the classic, at the fall of the western empire, has
done for mankind may be best felt, with Arnold (Arnold’s
“Lectures on Modern History”) over how large a portion
of the earth the influence of the German element is now
extended.

It affects more or less the whole west of Europe, from the
head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory
of Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides
and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a
large portion of this space is not predominantly German;
but even in France and Italy and Spain the influence of the
Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards,
while it has colored even the language, has in blood
and institutions left its mark legibly and indelibly.
Germany, the low countries, Switzerland for the most part,
Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and our own islands, are
all in language, in blood and institutions, German most
decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards
and Portuguese; all North America and Australia with
Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of
the German race in Africa and in India; it is enough to say
that half of Europe and all of America and Australia are
German, more or less completely, in race, in language, in
institutions or in all.

It has been extravagantly modish to distort ethnological facts and set up new gods, but the assailants of the German race have not been able successfully to deny that tremendous influence which has given birth to the free institutions of the world, and there are not wanting among Americans of authority those who have been openly outspoken for the truth. President Garfield in his article on “My Experiences as a Lawyer” in the “North American Review” for June, 1887, p. 569, observed, alluding to a speech made by him on the death of his friend, Representative Gustav Schleicher of Texas in 1879:

“We are accustomed to call England our fatherland. It is a
mistake; one of the greatest of modern historians writing
the history of the English people has said that England
is not the fatherland of the English-speaking people, but
Germany. I go into that and say, ‘The real fatherland of
the people of this country is Germany, and our friend who
has fallen came to us direct from our fatherland, and, not,
like the rest of us, around by the way of England.’ Then I
give a little sketch of German character, and what Carlyle
and Montesquieu said, that the British constitution came
out of the woods of Germany.”

In a like manner Charles E. Hughes, while governor of New York State, in a speech at Mount Vernon in 1908, said:

Did you ever think that a very large portion of our people,
despite their present distinction of home and birthplace,
and even nationality, are descended from those common
ancestors who a few years ago lived their life in the
German forests? There were nourished the institutions of
freedom; and if any one were to point to any place in the
world to which, above all, we trace our free institutions,
we would point, above all, to the forests of Germany.

=Americans Saved from Mexican Mob at Tampico by German Cruiser “Dresden.”=--The destruction of the little German cruiser “Dresden” by the British in the neutral waters of Chili, in March, 1915, must call up sentimental memories in the hearts of certain Americans. For it was the gallant little “Dresden” under command of Capt. von Koehler, that saved the lives of hundreds of American refugees who were surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob of Mexicans at the Southern Hotel, Tampico, Mexico, April 21, 1914. These fugitives had gathered from all parts of Mexico, expecting to be protected by the American battleships in Tampico Bay. But by some criminal short-sightedness the American ships were ordered to withdraw, and the Americans at the Southern Hotel were exposed to immediate death by a raging mob, when Capt. von Koehler entered upon the scene and threatened to lay Tampico in ashes if the mob did not disperse in fifteen minutes. He then sent a squad of his blue jackets ashore and extricated the besieged people from their dangerous position. Two American yachts, hoisting the German and English flags, carried the refugees to a place of safety. Capt. von Koehler’s gallantry was publicly acknowledged by Secretary of State Bryan. A special dispatch to the New York “Times,” dated Galveston, April 27, stated that “the officers of the battleship ‘Connecticut’ said tonight that but for the action of the men of the German cruiser ‘Dresden’ there would have been bloodshed on Tuesday night.” And “the refugees arriving on the ‘Esperanza’ sent this cable dispatch to the German Emperor:

“To your officers and men we owe our lives and pledge our
lifetime gratitude. We salute you and the noble men of your
Empire.”

=Armstadt, Major George.=--After the sack of Washington, the burning of the White House and the Capitol, in 1812, the British proceeded to attack Baltimore. This action brought into great prominence two Americans of German descent. General Johann Stricker, born in Frederick, Md., in 1759, was in command of the militia, and Major George Armstadt commanded Fort McHenry. He was born in New Market in 1780 of Hessian parents. “If Armstadt had not held Fort McHenry during its terrific bombardment by the British,” writes Rudolf Cronau in “Our Hyphenated Citizens,” a valuable little brochure, “our national hymn, ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ most probably would never have been written.”

=American School Children and Foreign Propaganda.=--The tendency in some directions to picture George III as “a German King,” in order to shift upon the shoulders of a historical manikin the responsibility for the American Revolutionary War, has gone so far as to attempt to blind the unthinking masses to the truth about our war of independence; but it should be remembered that if the responsibility rested wholly with this alleged “German King,” then Washington, Jefferson and Franklin deceived the American people and the Declaration of Independence was a lie. In that event we have lived 140 years of our history under a delusion and a fiction. It is eminently to the interest of English propaganda to create and strengthen this impression, and it is regrettable that no organized opposition has developed to the attempt to inculcate into the minds of our school children the conception that but for this German King we should still be a contented colony of the British crown.

How is this fiction fostered?

Largely through the medium of certain important book publishers, who print school books, though the public is ignorant of the fact that the majority of these publishing houses are financed either by British or American circles closely intermarried or financially related to English houses.

The movement to rewrite the history of the United States in the interest of England is so widespread and persistent that the chairman of the Americanization Committee of the Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, in November, 1919, published an expose of his discoveries and conclusions as to the extent of the British propaganda, in which he said:

To work among aliens to build up respect and loyalty for
the United States while a stupendous plot is under way to
destroy the very thing which we are pleading with these
aliens to preserve is wasted effort.

In view of the efforts to burden the shoulders of George III with the offenses that led to the Declaration of Independence while exonerating the English people of any guilt, by representing him as a “German King” to the uninformed minds of our school children, it is pertinent to quote Lord Macaulay’s description of George III:

The young king was a born Englishman; all his tastes, good
or bad, were English.... His age, his appearance and all
that was known of his character conciliated public favor.
He was in the bloom of youth; his person and address were
pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery
might without any glowing absurdity ascribe to him many
princely virtues.

We find nothing in Macaulay to warrant the conclusion that George, a born Englishman in the third generation, was not complete master of the English language, as has been alleged; and, moreover, if he can reasonably be called a German, because of his German ancestry, it follows that the same allegation can be reasonably preferred against President Wilson, and that, because of his even nearer English ancestry, he is really an Englishman and not an American--an imputation which his partisans would declare an absurdity on its face.

A further proof of the vicious misrepresentation which describes George III singly and alone responsible for the cause of the Revolution is contained in the words of our forefathers themselves. They must have known whom they were fighting, who tyrannized over them and who were trying to subjugate them. And this is what they said to the world:

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for
redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions
have been answered only by repeated inquiry.... Nor have
we been wanting in attention to our =British brethren=. We
have warned them from time to time of attempts by =their
legislature= to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction
over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to
their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured
them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations. =They, too=, have been deaf to the voice of
justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce
in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold
=them=, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in
peace friends.

=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=.... George III, 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 in 1777, 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 George III; 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 in 1917, 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 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=.

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 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.=--“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.

None other than John Jacob Astor found the way of making American commerce independent of England by getting around the English middleman in New York for the disposal of his products and shipping direct to the London market. It was he who opened the ports of China, then the foremost trading country of the Orient, to the American ships, by securing this privilege direct from the East India Company. It was Astor who made possible trans-continental intercourse and who opened the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the founding of Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River. It was at the cost of a fortune, it is true, but, with a spirit of enterprise which remained unrivaled for sixty years after he had blazed the way. Knowledge is power; and Astor, equipped only with an education such as a village school afforded, had a genius for imbibing knowledge from every source and direction, and then to employ it to the full bent of his exceptional ability.

His life (“Life and Ventures of the Original John Jacob Astor,” by Elizabeth L. Gebhard, Bryan Pub. Co., Hudson, N. Y.) was crowded with anecdotal incidents of his ability and manner of gathering information, always in the form of confidential chatter, or a simple plying of questions. In this he was materially aided by a winning personality, an open manner and inherent modesty, characteristics which clung to him even after he had become one of the leading and most influential figures in the country, and which remained with him until his death. He was a man of natural nobility, who achieved great results during his life-time and left his descendants to complete what he had no time to complete himself.

The author quoted, who is a great granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. John Gabriel Gebhard, pastor of the German Reformed Church in Nassau Street, New York, during the Revolution, and who was driven out of his pulpit through the machinations of the influential Tories then in New York, and forced to preach in Claverack in Van Rensselaer County, on the Hudson, declares that however fondly attached Astor was to his adopted country, he never abandoned certain ideals instilled in him in the old German home and of which neither his experiences nor the radical changes surrounding one so young could ever divest him, ideals translated into German thoroughness, German love of industry and efficiency and German honesty, judgment and foresight, confidence and the guiding principle that knowledge is power.

He enjoyed the friendship of many eminent men, and was very intimate with Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, at the suggestion of the former leaving $400,000 to found the Astor Library in New York City.

He was born in Waldorf, near Heidelberg, Germany, came to New York at the age of twenty with a few musical instruments, which he sold and the proceeds of which he invested in furs. He died March 29, 1848. His descendants only in part remembered the racial origin of the founder of their fortune, and one of them expatriated himself and in December, 1915, was made a baron by the King of England in recognition of his loyalty to the British Crown.

=Titled Americans.=--The correspondent of the New York “Evening Post,” writing from Paris after the armistice, commented on the power of propaganda through the medium of decorations bestowed on Americans by some of the foreign governments. The war has assuredly added a long list to the roll of titled Americans, Knights of the Garter and of the Bath and Chevaliers and Commanders of the Legion of Honor. Except Secretary Daniels and former Senator Lewis, practically all accepted the dignities with which they were invested at the hands of royalty. The cross of the Legion of Honor was established by Napoleon and historically is an imperial decoration.

Prominent among those who had knighthood conferred upon them at the hands of the King of England were General Pershing, General Dickman, former Ambassador James W. Gerard, Oscar Straus, Col. C. Cordier, Brigadier General C. B. Wheeler and Major General George W. Goethals (Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George). Lieutenant General Robert L. Bullard was decorated by the King of Belgium with the Order of Leopold and made a Commander of the Legion of Honor. General Joseph H. Kuhn, former military attache at Berlin with the American embassy, was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor. James M. Beck, a famous Wall Street corporation lawyer, was made “a Bencher,” an honor never before bestowed on an American, and he also received the Order of the Crown from the King of Belgium; Alfred C. Bedford, chairman of the board of directors of the Standard Oil Company, was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; Lieutenant Laurenc C. Welling of Mount Vernon received the order of a Chevalier of the Crown of Belgium; the Legion of Honor Cross was conferred on Dr. William T. Manning, rector of Trinity Church, New York; Otto H. Kahn was appointed by the King of Italy, Commander of the Crown of Italy, as was Major Julius A. Adler; J. M. Nye, chief special agent, in charge of King Albert’s train in the United States, was given the order of Chevalier of the Order of Leopold; Elizabeth Marbury was decorated with the Medal of Queen Elizabeth of Belgium “in recognition of services rendered to Belgium since 1914.”

Others named to be Knights Commanders by the King of England were Brigadier General George Bell, Jr., Major General William Lassiter, Brigadier General John L. Hines and Brigadier General Charles H. Muir; Commanders of the Order of the Bath, Brigadier General Malin Craig and Brigadier General Harry A. Smith; Commanders of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, Col. John Montgomery, Col. David H. Biddle, Col. William P. Wooten, Col. Horace Stebbins. Several American naval officers were “promoted” and nominated in the Legion of Honor.

Admiral Benson promoted to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion, while Admiral Mayo and Rear-Admirals Sims and Wilson are advanced to the grade of Grand Officer. Rear-Admirals Gleaves, Usher, Long, Griffin, Welles, Taylor and Earle become Commanders of the Legion.

Dr. Henry van Dyke, former American ambassador to the Netherlands, and Alexander J. Hemphill were made Chevaliers of the French Legion of Honor.

Companion of the Order of Bath--Major General William L. Kenly. Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George--Brigadier General William Mitchell, Brigadier General George S. Diggs, Colonel Walter Kilmer and Major Harold Fowler.

The widow of Col. Robert Bacon, who fell in action, was invested with the insignia on behalf of her husband of the order of British knighthood; Edward R. Stettinius was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor; the Order of the Crown was conferred on Elliot Wadsworth of Boston; Mrs. James Hamilton Lewis received a French decoration; Jacob A. Riis received the order of Danneborg from the King of Denmark. This list is only a partial one of Americans distinguished in the manner indicated, which prompted Arthur Brisbane in his column in the New York “American” to observe:

We shall have our little titled class in America, thanks
to the British King’s action. General Pershing is now “Sir
John”--in England, anyhow, and here if he chooses. Our
General Dickman, commander of the Third Army, is made a
Knight Commander of the Bath. He will be “Sir Joseph” and
his wife “Lady Dickman.” Those that “dearly love a Lord” or
a Knight are not all English.

In England such men as Gladstone, Carlyle and others
refused any title, setting too high a value upon their own
dignity. Some American soldiers have missed an opportunity
to take democracy seriously.

=Atrocities.=--It is easily conceivable that had Germany been invaded early in the war by the joint world powers, instead of the reverse, there would have been a decided sentiment in favor of Germany instead of an increasing hatred which in a short time was extended to people of German ancestry in the United States; it held them morally responsible for the alleged atrocities of the German armies in Belgium. When a paper like the New York “Sun” holds that “the Germans are not human beings in the common acceptation of the term,” it cannot avoid the responsibility which that verdict imposes on every person of German lineage in America. It is therefore a matter of duty to investigate the testimony of responsible persons whether the Belgian atrocities had any existence in the light in which they were presented. The administration shares this responsibility in having steadfastly ignored demands for the publication of the report on Belgian atrocities made by the British government early in the war and transmitted to the State Department by Ambassador Page at London. These atrocities were alleged to consist of cutting off of hands of Belgian children, cutting off tongues, of mutilating the breasts of women, of outraging nuns and violating nurses, crucifying soldiers, etc.

Now and then a conscientious voice was heard out of the universal cry of accusation such as represented by the following self-explanatory letter addressed to the New York “Evening Post:”

To The Editor of the “Evening Post:”

Sir: Every man who has had a connection with the honorable
British journalism of the past ought to thank you for
your just and moderate rebuke of the pretended censorship
which has passed off such a mountain of falsehoods on the
public of both hemispheres. I suppose I am the Doyen of
the foreign editors of London, and well I know that under
Gladstone and Beaconsfield it would have been impossible to
find either writers or censors for the abominable fictions
which have been spread in order to inflame the British
masses against their German opponents. The tales of German
officers filling their pockets with the severed feet and
hands of Belgian babies, and German Catholic regiments
deliberately destroying French Catholic Cathedrals, would
decidedly not have been accepted by any editors of the
“Times” or “Morning Post” in the days of Queen Victoria.

The worst part of these infamous inventions has been that
they have stirred up the blind fury of the English populace
against tens of thousands of inoffensive and useful
foreigners who have done nothing but good in a hundred
honest professions, and who are now, in the midst of savage
threats and insults, torn from their industrious homes and
thrust into bleak and miserable prisons without a single
comfort on the brink of the wintry season. The spectacle is
a hideous one, and the military censorship which has spread
the exciting calumnies has gained no enviable place in
truthful history.

F. Hugh O’Donnell.

Formerly foreign editor on the “Morning Post,” “Spectator,”
and other leading journals.

Melville E. Stone, general manager of the “Associated Press,” in an address before the Commercial Club of St. Louis, early in 1918, as reported in the St. Louis “Globe-Democrat,” of March 25, 1918, among other things made the following statement:

One of the many rumors which I have investigated since the
beginning of the war is that “the hands of Belgian children
have been cut off.” This is not the truth. Aside from all
other proof, a child whose hands had been cut off would die
if not given immediate medical attention; any surgeon or
physician will bear me out in this.

The rumor was given currency by pro-Germans in this
country, I believe, because it was so easy to deny it; they
could assume on the strength of the proof of that denial
that all other atrocities, of which there were innumerable
instances, could be denied.

I have investigated forty or fifty of such stories, and in
every case have found them untrue. One of these statements
came from the wife of a leading banker in Paris. She was
asked where she had seen the child, and mentioned a certain
railway station. Asked if she had seen the child, she
replied she had seen a little girl with her hands wrapped
up. She did not know the little girl. In reply to another
question she admitted she had been told the child’s hands
had been cut off by Germans by a woman who stood on the
platform near her. She had never seen the woman before or
after, and did not know her or know her name.

“There is a little band of Catholic priests,” he said, “who
have been going into Belgium and Holland and hunting out
children who have lost one or both parents or in the great
excitement have become separated from their parents. They
informed me in a letter that they had taken between 5,000
and 6,000 children from these countries and found homes for
them, and that they never had seen such a case and didn’t
believe they existed.”

On December 16, 1917, the Rev. J. F. Stillimans, a pupil of Cardinal Mercier, director of the Belgian Propaganda Bureau in New York, made a similar statement, singularly assigning the same reasons for the currency of the reports, namely, that they were inspired by “Germans.” He said:

I believe that the rumors as to mutilated children being
in this country are started and circulated by the Germans
themselves for the sake of being able to declare them
erroneous and to claim victoriously, though illogically,
that all other accusations are to be judged untrue, since
in this particular case no proof is forthcoming.

Because the proof was not forthcoming, the campaign was abandoned, thus leaving in the lurch a great many supposedly honorable persons who had sworn to “the truth of what they had seen with their own eyes.”

B. N. Langdon Davies, an Englishman, speaking at Madison, Wis., as reported under date of December 5, 1919, said among other things, that the public had been fed on a great deal of misinformation, and that most of the German atrocities were manufactured by Allied press agents for the purpose of stirring up hate.

The London “Globe” of November 1, 1915, said:

In regard to the stories about German war atrocities, which
are as mythical as the Russians in France, the “Globe”
has received numerous letters. Those who have until now
given credence to these stories must realize that reports
concerning atrocities which were never committed will tend
to shake confidence in the accuracy of reports concerning
innumerable barbarities which have been committed. These
reports are still credited in many circles, and what is
the result when investigations are instituted? It can
be expressed in one sentence which an official of the
Committee on Belgian Refugees stated to a reporter of the
“Globe” today:

“We have not seen a single mutilated Belgian refugee in
this country, nor have we found anyone who had ever seen
one.”

The following extract is from the “Universe,” London:

A correspondent writing from Amsterdam states that a friend
of his, a Catholic, who has visited many convents in
Belgium with the object of testing stories of ill-treatment
of nuns, makes the following statements. After careful
examination it is evident that, with the exception of one
or two isolated instances of rough treatment, Catholic
nuns have nowhere suffered violence; on the contrary,
this witness cites many examples of humane and excellent
behavior on the part of the Germans, both officers and
men. It is not to be assumed from the above that the
gentleman quoted has made an exhaustive examination of all
the convents in Belgium, but his evidence is noteworthy
since he explicitly denies, on the authority of the nuns
themselves, the stories of violence that were spread abroad
regarding two convents, one of which was at Malines and the
other at Blaunpal.

John T. McCutcheon, special war correspondent of the New York “World” and Chicago “Tribune,” made this declaration in September, 1914:

In that time from Louvain to the French frontier at
Beaumont, there has not been a single instance of wanton
brutality which has come under my observation. The widely
disseminated stories of German atrocities were found to
be groundless, and I am sincerely convinced, after my
association and the observation of the officers and private
soldier of the German columns with which I have traveled,
that no army could go through a hostile country with fewer
exhibitions of brutality.

In a special dispatch to the New York “Times,” dated London, October 16, 1914, Irvin S. Cobb, writes:

In all my travels in the theater of war I have seen no
atrocities committed by either side. I have seen men led
away to execution, but only after thorough and ready
justice of a drumhead court martial had been administered.
Germany is full of stories of German Red Cross nurses with
their breasts slashed by Belgians.

A highly important witness in this connection is Emily Hobhouse, the well-known English philanthropist and writer. In October, 1916, Miss Hobhouse wrote an article for a British periodical, giving her impressions of her visit to Belgium. She emphasized her astonishment at seeing so little of the terrible devastation which she had been led, by English newspaper reports, to expect. From her experience in the South African war she was well aware that soldiers rule with fire and sword, but she found nothing in Belgium to compare with the devastation of South Africa. While but 15,000 houses out of a total of 2,000,000 had been destroyed in Belgium, the houses of 30,000 farmers had been destroyed in the Boer war out of a relatively much smaller total, and whole cities and towns with their schools and churches had been made level with the ground. Even in cities like Liege and Antwerp, where the fighting had been fierce, she could discover no evidence of any extraordinary destructiveness on the part of the Germans, and the conditions in Louvain, which she had pictured as a place of ruins, fairly astounded her.

In May, 1915, on his return from Europe, Ex-Mayor and Ex-Representative McClellan of New York, gave out a statement correcting the view so prevalent in American circles that Belgium was devastated.

The following correspondence will speak for itself:

Rev. J. F. Matthews, Glossop Road Baptist Church, Sheffield.

Dear Sir:--A correspondent informs us that on Sunday
morning you stated in the course of a sermon delivered in
Wash Lane Church, Latchford, Washington, that there is a
Belgian girl in Sheffield with her nose cut off and her
stomach ripped open by the Germans and that she is still
living and getting better. I am anxious to investigate
stories of German atrocities and should be grateful if you
could send particulars to me by which your statement could
be authenticated. Faithfully yours,

A. FENNER BROCKWAY,
Editor of “Labor Leader.”

The Editor the “Labor Leader.”

Dear Mr. Brockway: I enclose our consul’s letter, which I
have just received. I am writing a letter to my old church
at Latchford, to be read on Sunday next, contradicting
the story which I told on what seemed to be unimpeachable
authority. I am glad I did not give the whole alleged facts
as they were given to me. With many thanks for your note
and inquiry, I am, yours sincerely,

JOHN FRANCIS MATTHEWS,
March 12, 1915.
(Enclosure.)

Dear Mr. Matthews: Replying to your letter of the 9th
inst., enclosing a letter which you have received from the
“Labor Leader,” although I have heard of a number of cases
of Belgian girls being maltreated in one way or another,
I have on investigation not found a particle of truth in
one of them, and I know of no girl in Sheffield who has
had her nose cut off and her stomach ripped open. I have
also investigated cases in other towns, but have not yet
succeeded in getting hold of any tangible information.
Yours very truly,

A. BALFAY,
Consulat du Royanne de Belgique.
District War Refugee Committee for Belgians.
March 11, 1915.

Horace Green, a war correspondent, who spent many weeks in Belgium during the early stages of the war, in his book, “The Log of a Noncombatant,” issued by the Houghton Mifflin Company, devotes the last chapter to a discussion of atrocities. Concluding that the stories of atrocities have been exaggerated a hundred fold, Mr. Green says:

The reports of unprovoked personal atrocities have been
=hideously exaggerated=. Wherever one real atrocity has
occurred, it has been multigraphed into a hundred cases.
Each, with clever variation in detail, is reported as
occurring to a relative or close friend of the teller. For
campaign purposes, and particularly in England for the sake
of stimulating recruiting, a partisan press has helped
along the concoction of lies.

In every war of invasion there is bound to occur a certain
amount of plunder and rapine. The German system of reprisal
is relentless; but the German =private as an individual
is no more barbaric= than his brother in the French, the
British, or the Belgian trenches.

In the “Atlantic Monthly” for October, 1917, Prof. Kellogg, of the American Belgian Relief Commission, while severely arraigning Germany’s treatment of Belgium, expressly states that he came across no instance of Belgian children with their hands cut off or women with breasts mutilated.

Ernest P. Bicknell, Director of Civilian Relief, American Red Cross, in an article in “The Survey” in 1917, writes as follows:

The world is familiar with stories of the atrocities
charged against the German army in Belgium. In our travels
in Belgium many of these stories came to our ears. In time
we came to feel that a fair consideration of these reports
required a careful discrimination between the conduct of
individual German soldiers, and those operations carried on
under the direction of army officers in accordance with a
deliberately adopted military policy.

Approaching this subject in accordance with this idea, we
should classify the stories of mutilations, violations of
women, killing of women and children, etc., as belonging
in the category chargeable against individuals of reckless
and criminal character, who when opportunity offers, will
gratify their lawless passions. The stories of individual
atrocities in Belgium, which have shocked the world, we
found difficult to verify. While it is probable that such
atrocities were occasionally committed, I personally came
in contact with no instance of that character during my
travels about Belgium; nor did I discuss this subject with
any person who had himself come in contact with such an
instance.

In my opinion the verdict of history upon the conduct of
the German army in Belgium will give little heed to these
horrifying stories of individual crime.

Testimony along the same line is furnished by Father Duffy, chaplain of the 165th Infantry; the War Refugee Committee in London, George Bernard Shaw, General Pershing, General March and many others of equal standing, and furnishes an array of evidence that is strangely opposed to that of Mrs. Harjes, the wife of the partner of J. P. Morgan, that she personally saw Belgian children with their hands cut off, and of Cardinal Mercier, who stirred the heart of humanity when he declared that “forty-nine Belgian priests were tortured and put to death by the Germans during the occupation.” It is a matter of record, however, that General Bissig, Governor General of Belgium during the occupation, forbade the Belgians to keep song birds that had been bereft of their eyes to make them sing better. The order concludes: “The wilful blinding of birds is an act of cruelty which I cannot under any circumstances tolerate.”

Five reputable American correspondents on September 6, 1914, after tracing the German army in its invasion of 100 miles, sent a message to the American people that “we are unable to report a single instance (of atrocities) unprovoked.... Everywhere we have seen Germans paying for purchases and respecting property rights as well as according civilians every consideration.... To the truth of these statements we pledge our professional and personal word.” The statement was signed by James O’Donnell Bennett and John T. McCutcheon, of the Chicago “Tribune;” Roger Lewis, of the Associated Press; Irvin S. Cobb, of the “Saturday Evening Post,” and Harry Hansen, of the Chicago “Daily News.”

It has been said that Lord Bryce signed the official atrocity report and that his honored name raises it above suspicion. Lord Bryce is an old man and it is inferred that he signed the report in good faith without, however, having looked into the truth or falsity of the statements himself, accepting the word of others who were using him for their nefarious purpose, the intention being to incite American public opinion to action in behalf of the Allies. For Lord Bryce is flatly contradicted by the following cable message from London, taken from the daily papers of September 15, 1914:

(Lord Bryce subsequently modified his position by a denial
of the truth of the report as presented.--Ed.)

London, Sept. 14, 3:23 P. M.--Premier Asquith told the
House of Commons today that official information had
reached the Ministry of War concerning the repeated stories
that German soldiers had abused the Red Cross flag, killed
and maimed the wounded, and killed women and children, as
had been alleged so often in stories of the battlefields.

Joseph Medill Patterson: The Hague, September 11--To the
Chicago “Tribune:” I firmly believe that all stories put
out by the British and French of tortures, mutilations,
assaults, etc., of Germans are utterly rubbish.

A flat denial of the atrocity stories was furnished by a Washington dispatch to the New York “World,” five months after the invasion of Belgium. The report contained the substance of an official finding by the British government and was turned over to Ambassador Walter H. Page for transmission to Washington upon the request of the American government. When Dr. Edmund von Mach subsequently requested the State Department for information about the finding, after returning one evasive reply, Secretary Lansing left Dr. von Mach’s letters unanswered and the report has never been made public. Following is the Washington report referred to:

Washington, Jan. 27. (Special to the “World”)--Of the
thousands of Belgian refugees who are now in England not
one has been subjected to atrocities by German soldiers.
This in effect is the substance of a report received at the
State Department from the American Embassy in London. The
report states that the British government thoroughly had
investigated thousands of reports to the effect that German
soldiers had perpetrated outrages on the fleeing Belgians.
During the early period of the war, columns of the British
newspapers were filled with these accusations. Agents of
the British government, according to the report from the
American Embassy at London, carefully investigated all of
these charges; they interviewed alleged victims and sifted
all the evidence. As a result of the investigation the
British Foreign Office notified the American Embassy that
the charges appeared to be based upon hysteria and natural
prejudice. The report added that many of the Belgians had
suffered severe hardships but they should be charged up
against the exigencies of war rather than the brutality of
the individual German soldier.

According to advices from Switzerland, under date of July 9, 1916, the paper “Italia” printed the following:

“Assisted by the Papal state department, the congregation
of Catholic church officials instituted a searching
inquiry into the reported German atrocities in Belgian
convents, first among the Belgian prioresses resident
in Rome, next among the Belgian nuns passing through,
all of whom unanimously deny having any knowledge of the
alleged atrocities. Bishop Heylen, of Namur, who was
among those examined, declared that the reports referred
to were lacking in every essential of truth. Possibly an
isolated case had occurred without his knowledge, but
certainly nothing beyond this. Cardinal Mercier, who was
also interviewed, spoke of three cases based upon hearsay.
The Congregation deplored the spread of exaggerated
reports lacking all semblance of truth and expressed its
satisfaction with the results of the investigation.”

To the last it was a favorite pastime to charge the Germans with wanton destruction of towns. Ample contradiction could easily be offered if space permitted. Thus William K. Draper, Vice Chairman of the New York County Chapter of the American Red Cross, is quoted in the New York “Times” of July 13, 1919: “A pitiful part of this destruction is the realization that much of it was caused by French artillery, the troops being forced to demolish the towns while being occupied and used by the Germans.”

The whole web of lies and the conditions underlying the scheme are conclusively exposed in “The Tragedy of Belgium,” by Richard Grasshof, (New York: C. E. Dillingham Co.)

The Belgian atrocities were purposely conceived and exaggerated for two reasons: