Later the Fox Film Company informed me that their film called "The Spy" and which deals with the adventures of an American who is supposed to go to Germany to get a list of German spies and agents in America, was refused the right of exhibition in Chicago by this same Major Funkhouser. In this case the Fox Company appealed in the courts and obtained from Judge Alschuler an injunction preventing any one from interfering with the exhibition of this film. The decision of Judge Alschuler was affirmed on appeal.
And yet the mass of the people in Chicago are splendidly patriotic as the record of Chicago for enlistment and Red Cross and Liberty Loan shows.
When I spoke in the great Medinah Temple under the auspices of the Hamilton Club, on October twenty-second, I was able to show to the audience two German text-books used in the Chicago public schools, stamped with the royal arms of Prussia. The books had been approved by Ella Flagg Young, Superintendent of Schools, in 1914.
These books were furnished me by my friend, Anthony Czarnecki of the Chicago Daily News whom I first met in Berlin where he came to do most excellent work for his paper. In one of these books is printed the German patriotic song, The Watch on the Rhine ("Die Wacht am Rhein"). What a howl there would have been if some public school superintendent had selected for the schools under her jurisdiction a text-book of English literature with the royal arms of England stamped on the cover and "Rule Britannia" prominently displayed inside!
These text-books were cleverly compiled to impress children at a youthful age with a favourable idea of kings and emperors. In one of these was an anecdote about Frederick the Great and a miller, and in another, one about the Emperor Charlemagne and the scholar, of course, making Frederick and Charlemagne appear as good kindly people, and giving the impression that all kings and emperors are beneficent beings. But no word is there in these books quoting the present German Emperor's statement in which he puts Frederick in the same class as the four other bloody conquerors of history, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric and Napoleon, and says that where they failed in their dreams of world conquest, his mailed fist will succeed. Why was not Frederick the Great's statement printed in these books, his admission that he engaged upon the Seven Years' War "in order to be talked about"?
These books contained quotations from Goethe. Why did they not contain Goethe's statement, "Amerika, du hast es besser."? (America, you are better off). Or his prophecy about the Prussians, "The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will make him ferocious."
The only foreign language taught in the grammar schools of Chicago is German. Parents are compelled to sign a statement in which they answer the question as to whether they wish their children to be taught German or not.
See how subtle this is! Doubtless if a Teuton parent answers that he does not desire to have his children taught German the paid agents of the German propaganda stir up feeling against these Germans who have dared to refuse to have their children taught the language of the fatherland.
And when a parent has once elected that his children shall be taught German, not the principal of the school, not the district superintendent, but only the head of all the Chicago school system, on the application of the parent, can excuse the child, during his or her school course, from further study of German.
Worst of all, however, is the Chicago official school speller, a book printed under the direction and compiled by the school authorities of Chicago. In this speller there is just one piece of reading matter and that a fulsome eulogy of the present German Emperor.