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]