Rhodes’ published will of July 1, 1899, has a broad provision for his American propaganda in paragraph 16: “And whereas I also desire to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking people throughout the world, and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America who will benefit from the American Scholarships to be established at the University of Oxford under my Will, an attachment to the country from which they have sprung,” etc.
The effect of the Rhodes American scholarship scheme was clearly set forth in the “Saturday Evening Post” of July 13, 1912, wherein the writer says:
“Twenty years hence and forever afterward there will be between two and three thousand men (Rhodes graduates) in the prime of life scattered over the English-speaking world, each of whom will have had impressed upon his mind at the most susceptible period the dreams of a union of our people.”
In the “North American Review” for June, 1893, Mr. Carnegie already advocated the subordination of our fiscal policy to that of England. He said:
“I do not shut my eyes to the fact that reunion, bringing free entrance of British products, would cause serious disturbance to many manufacturing interests near the Atlantic Coast which have been built up under the protective tariff system. Judging from my knowledge of the American manufacturers, there are few who would not gladly make the necessary pecuniary sacrifices to bring about a reunion of the old home and the new.”
In a like manner Mr. Carnegie spoke at Dundee, in 1890, and in the “North American Review” he candidly stated: “National patriotism or pride cannot prove a serious obstacle in the way of reunion.... The new nation would dominate the world.”
The war has blinded us to many issues that affect our political future. With Lord Northcliffe admittedly in control of many important American papers, there has been printed only what was approved in London, and suppressed whatever menaced the peaceful pursuit of the policy of the proposed merger. It cropped out in the draft of the League of Nations, rejected by the United States Senate, which provided for six votes for Great Britain and her colonies and only one vote for the United States on all questions to be decided. Only a few Senators were alive to the danger, and the misguided public was so reluctant to hear the truth that Senator Reed of Missouri, one of the first to protest, was for a time repudiated by the leaders of his party in his own State, and assailed on the platform when he attempted to speak in Oklahoma.
The movement to anglicise the United States is making rapid progress. It had its inception in London and is conducted in this country under the auspices of pronounced Anglophiles in the name of the “English-Speaking Union,” headed by former President Taft, with the following persons as vice presidents: George Haven Putnam, chairman of the organization committee; Albert Shaw, Ellery Sedgwick, George Wharton Pepper, John A. Stewart, Otto H. Kahn, Charles C. Burlingham, Charles P. Howland, R. Harold Paget, Edward Harding, the Rev. Lyman P. Powell, E. H. Van Ingen, and Frank P. Glass. In London the organization is called the Anglo-American Society. At a meeting held in that city on June 26, 1919, presided over by Lord Bryce, an elaborate programme was agreed upon to carry the propaganda into the United States and England. To that end, Washington and the Puritan fathers, though the former headed the rebellion against England and the latter fled its shores to escape persecution, are to be employed as symbols of Anglo-American unity, and a great number of festivities and memorials are included in theprogram, which will develop in the course of the year. Preparations are now being made for the 300th anniversary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
A Sulgrave Institution has been organized—Sulgrave Manor being the ancestral home of George Washington—which has raised $125,000 in England and is raising a fund of $1,000,000 in this country. The use of the fund was explained by John A. Stewart, chairman of the board of governors, who said it was “to establish scholarships in English universities and later in this country, and also to refit Sulgrave Manor.” King George was one of the first contributors to the English campaign, he said.
On June 28, 1919, the King of England sent by cable a message to the President, in which he said: