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 colonieswould 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: