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 boldnessin 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.
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.