"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

Lossing sums up our debt to France in the following words:

That all assistance was afforded, primarily, as a part of a State policy for the benefit of France;

That the French people as such never assisted the Americans; for the French democracy did not comprehend the nature ofthe struggle, and had no opportunity for expression, and the aristocracy, like the government, had no sympathy with their cause;

That the first and most needed assistance was from a French citizen (Beaumarchais), favored by his government for State purposes, who hoped to help himself and his government;

That, with the exception of the services of Lafayette and a few other Frenchmen, at all times, and those of the army under Rochambeau, and the navy under De Grasse, for a few weeks in the seventh year of the struggle, the Americans derived no material aid from the French;

That the moral support offered by the alliance was injurious because it was more than counterpoised by the relaxation of effort and vigilance which a reliance upon others is calculated to inspire, and the creation of hopes which were followed by disappointment;

That the advantages gained by the French over the English, because of their co-operation with the Americans, were equivalent to any which the Americans acquired by the alliance;

That neither party then rendered assistance to the other because of any good will mutually existing, but as a means of securing mutual benefits; and

That the Americans would doubtless have secured their independence and peace sooner without their entanglements with the French than with it.

A candid consideration of these facts, in the light of present knowledge on the subject, compels us to conclude that there is no debt of gratitude due from Americans to France for services in securing their independence of Great Britain which is not cancelled by the services done by the Americans at the same time in securing for France important advantages over Great Britain. And when we consider these facts and the conduct of the French toward us during a large portion of the final decade of the last century, and of the decade of this just closed—the hostile attitude, in our national infancy, of the inflated Directory, sustained by the French people, and the equally hostile attitude, in the hour of our greatest national distress, of the imperial cabinet, also sustained by the French people, Americans cannot be expected to endure with absolute complacency the egotism which untruthfully asserts that they owe their existence as a nation to the generosity and valor of the French.