"1683-1920" / The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germantown Settlement of 1683 and a Thousand Other Topics

by Frederick Franklin Schrader

Declaration of Independence.—The first paper to print the Declaration of Independence in the United States was a German newspaper, the “Pennsylvania Staatsboten” of July 5, 1776. It is also claimed that the first newspaper in Pennsylvania was printed in the German language. Benjamin Franklin at one time complained that of the eight newspapers then existing in Pennsylvania two were German,two were half German and half English, and only two were printed in English.

Dorsheimer, Hon. William.

Dorsheimer, Hon. William.—Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York; born at Lyons, Wayne County, 1832. His father was Philip Dorsheimer, a native of Germany, who emigrated from Germany and settled at Buffalo; he was one of the founders of the Republican party and in 1860 was elected Treasurer of the State.

Dutch and German.

Dutch and German.—In the history of early American colonization the terms Dutch and German are often confounded, as the English had little first-hand acquaintance with the people of the continent save Dutch, French and Spanish. Hence many have inferred that the Pennsylvania Germans were somehow misnamed for Pennsylvania Dutch, because the latter designation is the more frequently employed in describing the most important element of the population concerned in the settlement of Penn’s Commonwealth. Many of the first settlers of New Amsterdam were Germans and almost as many Germans as Swedes were concerned in the earliest European settlement of Delaware.Peter Minnewit, the first regular governor of New Amsterdam, was German-born, and it was he who, having entered the Swedish service, in 1637, with a ship of war and a smaller vessel, led a colony of Swedes with their chaplain, to the Delaware River region, between Cape Henlopen and Christian Creek. They bought land of the Indians and called it “New Sweden.” A second company of immigrants from Sweden came over in 1642, under Colonel John Printz, likewise a native of Germany. Among these first settlers of Delaware a considerable number were Germans. The latter however, are more often confounded with their nearest of kin, the Hollanders. “At that time,” says Anton Eickhoff (“In der Neuen Heimath”) “the distinction between Hollanders and Germans was not as pronounced as nowadays. The loose political union which had never been very close, between Holland and the German Empire, was formally severed by the Peace of Westphalia. But though politically it was no longer a German State, Holland continued to be regarded as such in public mind. The common language of the Hollanders and the Low Germans was Plattdeutsch.” Dr. William Elliot Griffis (“The Romance of American Colonization”) refers to the confounding of Germans with Dutch. “The Isthmus of this peninsula was called ‘Dutch Gap,’ after the glass makers who set up their furnace here in 1608,” he writes. “Most Englishmen then made and uneducated people now make, no distinction between the Dutch and the Germans, who are politically different people.”

Dual Citizenship.

Dual Citizenship.—It was frequently alleged before and during our entrance into the war that a native German might under the lawsof Germany become a citizen of another country without thereby being released from his obligations to his native country, and the attempt was made to make it appear that naturalized Germans could still be regarded as citizens of Germany, or as possessing dual citizenship.

It is true that the German law (Reichs-und-Staatsangehorigkeits-Gesetz) of July, 1913, says: “Citizenship is not lost by one who, before acquiring foreign citizenship, has secured on application the written consent of the competent authorities of his home State to retain his citizenship. Before this consent is given the German Consul is to be heard.” But this section is under no circumstances applicable to the United States, because in Section 36 the law says: “This law does not apply as far as treaties with foreign countries say otherwise.” Now the treaty of the United States with the Northern German Confederacy which was concluded 1868 (the Bancroft treaty) provides that Germans naturalized in the United States shall be treated by Germany as American citizens. This provision applies now to the natives of all the German States, and was so interpreted by the State Department.

Earling, Albert J.

Earling, Albert J.—President of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company and one of the recognized authorities on modern railway economics. Son of German immigrants.