.M17 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 0DDQ57331QT 
 
v»^- 
 
 v*^ 
 
 ■or <i» • €^^ ■* ■* v» -^^^jr* <Lr ^ • 
 
 
 •^0 
 
 
 '•f>. x-^*^ .• 
 
 
 .-i- o 
 
 0^ r'L^^,^^ 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 '^bV^ °' 
 
 
 a5 °^ -' 
 
 y •IV' > 
 
 ^/^9' 
 
 
 
 
 r.** ^0 
 
 
 
 ^ * ■ay ti» • ^ ^ - 
 
 «<» •> 
 
 
 r.* -«^^ % -: 
 
 o . » 
 
 
 
 
 
 o. * 
 
 c « o 
 
 
 
 « ^'i'^rv o 
 
 
 
 
 * >^ 
 
 
 .^"^ / 
 
 . "^o^ 
 
 O. * o « 
 
 ■• k'V *** * 
 
 n > ^ 1 • a . "^•v 4 > . » • • > o 
 

 
 ^^ 
 
 > .^^°*^ -' 
 
 
 '." ^^^-'^^ V 
 
 
 o°\c:^.*°o 
 
 O K O * ,0' 
 
 U-o "^^ ,.^ .*- 
 
 
 L-b^rs o 
 
 
 
 
 
 ,v«^. 
 
 
 
 ^ ^ %> ' 
 
 <> ''.'•• 
 
 
 '^* ■or ^ • ^ ^ - 
 
 » .0^ ^b, 'o . . * A 
 
 <> *'7V 
 
 %^ .r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <n_ * 
 
 ^'^ ^ 
 
 » (".v^ 
 
 
 0^ "o^ '<r.7>« A <. *'.. s 
 
 .0^ . 
 
 ^^ ' ^ ' ■ '^'^» 0^ "^ -O.I* A <v r 
 
 * aV ->*. 
 
 /.c:^.% 
 
 
 iOv\ 
 
 
 V ^y 
 
 
 
 ;* .^ 
 
The 
 Attack on America 
 
 Address before the Quartered Meeting uf the 
 
 Society of the 
 Friendly Sons of St. Patrick 
 
 In the City of New York 
 
 (Instituted 1784) 
 By 
 
 EDWARD F. McSWEENEY 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 New York 
 Monday Evening, November 15, 1920 
 
^^iJi 
 
 
 '■ ' / '^ 
 
 ''■''ry. 
 
 t'-; 
 
 .' _;' /*. ' v'; 
 
 • : ■- 
 
 
 .;..,■ rf-^'''^: 
 
 •''H'v 
 
 ^'-r 
 
 
 "' ■'■ ■■' 
 
 . ,' ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •'■'^■l 
 
 ■%■■ 
 
 
 
 ;' *■ '■ 
 
 V^'^^'r 
 
 
 
 
 
 •- ■ ' .^' 
 
 y,.^r;;;-^i- 
 
 
 
 
 --3M 
 
 'v'^' 
 
 ^;:^V i'-T 
 
 
The 
 Attack on America 
 
 Address before the Quarterly Meeting of the 
 
 Society of the 
 Friendly Sons of St. Patrick 
 
 In the City of New York 
 
 (Instituted 1784) 
 
 By 
 EDWARD F. McSWEENEY 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 New York 
 Monday Evening, November 15, 1920 
 
£1 
 
 .7. 
 
 

 FOREWORD 
 
 FOLLOWING an old-time custom, of the Society of the Friendly 
 Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York, a series of 
 addresses on questions of importance have been delivered at their 
 quarterly meetings held at stated intervals throughout the year. 
 
 At the meeting on November 15, 192i0, the following remarkable 
 address was delivered by Mr. Edward F. McSweeney, of Boston. It 
 evoked so much enthusiasm and made so profound an impression 
 upon the members of the Society present that it was unanimously 
 decided by them that the address should be printed for distribution 
 and sent, not alone to the members, but to others in the discretion 
 of the officers of the Society. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the lecturer is already well known 
 throughout the country, it may not be amiss to say a word of intro- 
 duction of him to those members of the Society who were not 
 fortunate enough to be present at the last meeting. 
 
 Edward F. McSweeney is one of the foremost members of the 
 group of American citizens of Irish blood who during the last two 
 years have rendered such splendid service to our country in awaken- 
 ing her to the dangers that threaten her from foreign intrigue, thus 
 continuing the extraordinary services rendered to America by men 
 of Irish blood, in peace as well as in war, throughout the entire 
 period of our existence as a nation. Scholar, student, economist, 
 lecturer and writer, he has done much to dispel the mists of mis- 
 representation which the spokesmen of that group of citizens who 
 would like to undo the work of the Revolution had spread over the 
 land, and his work has greatly helped in the forming of the fairer 
 estimate now held by citizens of non-Irish blood of the great con- 
 tribution made to the foundation, the upbuilding and the preserva- 
 
 3 
 
tion of our country by men of Irish blood. Not the least of his 
 services to our country is his work in exposing in Massachusetts 
 the efforts made in England's interest to re-write for our school 
 books the story of the Revolution, and to present that great event 
 as a petty quarrel between a German king and a handful of hot- 
 headed, misguided rebels. 
 
 The following lecture is a good example of his work. It 
 discloses the wide range of his studies, and the thorough manner 
 in which he handles a thesis. He states his facts clearly and argues 
 dispassionately and moderately for his conclusions. 
 
 He shows that in every generation since the Declaration of 
 Independence the friends of England have been working tirelessly 
 to undo the result of the Revolution and to reincorporate our country 
 in the British Empire. That they have failed thus far in their 
 efforts is due in large measure to the unceasing vigilance of American 
 citizens of Irish blood, who have ever recognized the essential im- 
 portance to America of following the advice of Washington against 
 entangling alliances. 
 
 Never was the British Empire in greater need of the assistance 
 of America than at this time; never were her agents more busily 
 engaged in their efforts to prove that the British Empire and America 
 are essentially one in ideals, sentiments and interests. They have 
 seized the Tercentenary Celebration of the Pilgrims to attempt to 
 prove that our institutions are the outcome of English ideals and our 
 liberty the outgrowth of English struggles for progress. 
 
 Mr. McSweeney with lucidity and fairness shows the utter 
 absurdity of this claim and places the real facts in orderly historical 
 array. 
 
 His labors will be well repaid if they result in helping to awaken 
 our countrymen to the dangers that menace us from outside inter- 
 ference with our affairs and recall to us the great truth that "eternal 
 vigilance is the price of liberty." 
 
 DANIEL F. COHALAN, 
 
 President of the Society of the Friendly Sons 
 
 of St. Patrick in the City of New York. 
 
 4 
 
SINCE the completion of the Jay Treaty in 1793, there 
 has been a continuous effort either to subjugate the 
 United States to foreign political control, or to entangle it 
 in the complexities of European diplomacy. 
 
 Except in the minds of men like Samuel Adams and 
 Patrick Henry, the American Revolution was not originally 
 a struggle for separation from England, but, rather, an 
 effort to reform or abolish the injustices afterward cited 
 in the Declaration of Independence. While the support of 
 Burke and Barre was genuine as far as it went, it did not 
 go farther than to demand that the wrongs against which 
 the Colonists complained, must be righted by England, but 
 the imperial connection was to be maintained. Almost up 
 to the Declaration of Independence, Franklin, Washington 
 and John Adams were not for separation, but once the war 
 was begun the situation in the Colonies crystallized into a 
 clear-cut, unequivocal demand for independence. After 1778 
 Washington could have ended the contest at any time, with 
 substantially every demand of the Colonies granted: except 
 separation. The famous Staten Island Conference, which 
 rejected the proffer of General Howe, represented the unani- 
 mous opinion of the colonial patriots, who, at best, num- 
 bered only a little more than a majority of the total white 
 population. Under the circumstances, the persistence of 
 Washington and his supporters in enduring all the miseries 
 which they went through for five years, after he could have 
 obtained an honorable peace if he would consent to British 
 control, is the best answer to the anti- American propagand- 
 ists, who are today spreading fantastic falsehoods to under- 
 mine American patriotism and respect for and belief in our 
 national origins. 
 
 5 
 
For some years after 1782 the European powers had 
 little confidence in the permanency of the new Republic. 
 England openly declared that the separation was only acci- 
 dental and temporary. It has never ceased, to manifest this 
 belief, in its attitude of hatred and hostility to this country 
 at the critical periods of its career. Political differences in 
 England and national peril abroad made the war against 
 the American colonies the plaything of politics and had 
 great influence on the result. The obvious belief that even 
 if the Colonies temporarily separated, they would later be 
 restored to Britain has remained ever since the mainspring 
 of British attitude toward the United States. 
 
 After the signing of the Jay Treaty and the establish- 
 ment, under Hamilton, of a sound basis of national finance, 
 European diplomacy began to realize that across the 
 Atlantic a permanent liberalizing force in world affairs 
 had been firmly established, which must be conquered or 
 cajoled. Washington, who foresaw that the attempt to re- 
 conquer America would be made, in 1796 laid down the broad 
 philosophical principle fundamental to the idea which had 
 brought this nation into being — as immutable today as when 
 it was made — that Europe had, and must always have, 
 primary interests with which the United States had little 
 or very remote relation; the nations of Europe would, and 
 of necessity must, he said, be engaged in frequent controvers- 
 ies, and it would be most unwise for the United States to 
 be implicated, by artificial ties or otherwise, in the com- 
 binations and collusions of European friendships or enmities. 
 
 When Washington uttered these words, England and 
 France were deadlocked in a terrific struggle for mastery 
 of the sea and supremacy in India, which continued until 
 the Congress of Vienna erased the French Empire from the 
 map of Europe. With control of the sea, and Indian domi- 
 nance assured, England entered on an era of passive friend- 
 ship with France, it being the English policy that after a 
 competitor has been depleted by war, with its reservoirs 
 of manhood and material wealth exhausted, a show of friend- 
 
 6 
 
ship will permit gathering the profits of its former enemy's 
 weakness, as witness the duplicity of the present English 
 attitude toward Germany. 
 
 After the Jay Treaty, our trade treaties with England 
 were one act after another of contemptuous disrespect of 
 our national rights, which finally culminated in the War of 
 1812, During this time English propaganda in the United 
 States was organized oflflcially as an aid to English military 
 power. It was only by a miracle that the Federalist seces- 
 sionist faction were prevented from taking New England 
 out of the Union and setting up an independent State, sub- 
 ject to England, under the nominal headship of a member 
 of the English royal family. The successful ending of the 
 War of 1812, was coincident with the Congress of Vienna, 
 where the Czar of Russia, a well-intentioned theorist and 
 a firm believer in the "Divine right," was manipulated by 
 Metternich in formulating a league — deliberately designed to 
 uphold imperial absolutism in Europe — which was called 
 the "Holy Alliance." 
 
 The reaction of the United States to its victory over 
 England in 1815 was shown in national disapproval of the 
 imperialistic "Holy Alliance," followed by the political ex- 
 tinction of the Federalist ''pro-Britishers" and the rebirth 
 of an eager Americanism, which continued without abate- 
 ment for forty years. This American spirit in 1823, 
 brought into being the "Monroe Doctrine," against the integ- 
 rity of which, for obvious reasons, the powerful opposition 
 of England has been continuous. 
 
 During the twenty-five years after 1815, the development 
 of the modern industrial system; the growth of modern sea 
 power, following the introduction of the iron ship ; with the 
 domestic questions of "Catholic Emancipation" and Chart- 
 ism; and the political and economic agitation led by Bright 
 and Cobden in England and John Mitchel and James Fenton 
 Lalor in Ireland, kept England so busy at home that it had 
 not time to bother with America. The changes following 
 
 7 
 
the birth of the factory system and the debased position 
 of the worker, especially in England, was accompanied by a 
 spirit of industrial protest in England and the continent 
 which permitted the United States to work out its own 
 program unhampered by foreign diplomatic influences. 
 
 After the iron ship was introduced, in the early 40"s, the 
 United States answered the attempt of England to get 
 mastery of the seas, by building, in the decade and a half 
 ending with 1855 a greater number of ships than had ever 
 been turned out by a nation before in the history of the 
 world. The answer of England to this demand for trade 
 equality was the beginning, in 1840, of the intrigue to break 
 down the Monroe Doctrine, by invading Venezuela secretly 
 but persistently continued until it was frustrated fifty-five 
 years later by Grover Cleveland. A few years later, Eng- 
 land's underhand participation in the quarrel, which finally 
 resulted in the Mexican War, was designed as the entering 
 <vedge to break up the American Kepublic. 
 
 In 1850, Germany and Russia and Japan were still 
 negligible factors as commercial powers. The Civil War 
 gave Great Britain an opportunity to stifle the growing mari- 
 time competition of the United States, which it did with a 
 ferocity of hatred and malignity which even the passage of 
 seventy years cannot befog. 
 
 With the Civil War ended, American shipping, due 
 to English enmity, had been destroyed. The profits in 
 manufacturing, and the money to be made in developing west- 
 ern farm and grazing areas and providing railroad communi- 
 cation between the two oceans, over-balanced the attractions 
 of the over-sea trade which, before the Civil War, had pro- 
 vided the bulk of the great American fortunes. Fitful but 
 unavailing attempts were made to revive our merchant ma- 
 rine. America for the next thirty years provided Europe with 
 the raw materials and food products it absolutely needed. 
 Britain was permitted to dictate as to ocean freight and 
 rates; it combined with American railroads; it assumed the 
 
 8 
 
undisputed authority over American ports and over-seas 
 trade. This, for England, is the ideal to be encouraged. 
 
 By 1890 Germany had grown so strong that it demanded 
 from England equal partnership on the seas, and after a 
 sharp rate-cutting war forced compliance, and sea control 
 was thereafter, until 1914, British and German. From that 
 moment, the great war to decide which of these two nations 
 would be absolute master of the seas was inevitable. 
 
 The policy of political absolutism following the "Holy 
 Alliance" in 1815 had forced the workers of Europe into a 
 position of economic serfdom, which, since that time, has sent 
 thirty-five million aliens to the United States, who constitute 
 today, in their descendants, more than 75% of the American 
 population. The Irish potato famine in the late 40's, which 
 in ten years cut the population of Ireland in half, and started 
 the tide of Irish emigration to this country, was a reflection 
 of the political absolutism of the "Holy Alliance," slightly 
 modified in England by the Reform Bill of 1812. This same 
 evil influence with similar results was also at work in France 
 Germany and Austria. It was the debased condition of th« 
 English worker in the 40's which caused Carl Marx to write 
 Das Capital and thus to become the leader of an economic 
 theory which, if it ever finds popular support will, in prac- 
 tical operation, obliterate and replace democracy, with all 
 its faults, with a tyranny under which the imperfections of 
 the present industrial wage system will seem like paradise. 
 The "Union of Kings," miscalled the "Holy Alliance," the 
 model for the League of Nations, designed to uphold political 
 absolutism, embroiled Europe in war. It made and kept the 
 nations poor. It made the United States rich and great, 
 because it forced the coming to this country of the millions 
 of aliens, without whose labor our country would not have 
 achieved its position and power. This alien labor power en- 
 abled our manufacturers to carry out the political policy, 
 entered into after the Civil War, of stimulating manufac- 
 turing production on the theory that the United States 
 
 9 
 
could, for an indefinite time, consume all it could produce. 
 By 1890 the nation had progressed so fast in "quantity 
 production" that in ten months our factories could turn out 
 more than the nation could consume in the full year. The 
 financial panic which began in the Argentine in 1890 and 
 reached this country immediately after the election of 1892, 
 delayed for some years full appreciation by the people of 
 the United States of the gravity of the situation. A ma- 
 jority, in fact do not realize it now. Today we face four 
 months' annual unemploj-ment, or, to keep our factories con- 
 stantly busy, we must dispose of our additional four months' 
 product in the markets of the world. This means "freedom 
 of the seas," which England will never consent to, without 
 the application of force, and to control the situation even 
 before 1890, England saw what was coming and began its 
 propaganda campaign to make the United States a subordi- 
 nate partner in its enterprises. 
 
 In 1885, the historian Freeman discovered that George 
 Washington, who from 1776 to 1782 would have been hanged 
 and quartered as a rebel if he had been captured by the 
 English, was the "originator of Greater Britain." Yet at the 
 very moment Freeman was making this statement, the scenes 
 were being laid for the final act of the conspiracy, which, in 
 1840, had been planned to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine, 
 through English control of British Guiana; only finally to 
 be defeated when President Cleveland drew, in its behalf 
 in 1895 the sheathed sword of American democracy and 
 forced England to back down. If the attack on the Monroe 
 Doctrine through Venezuela had not been defeated in 1895, 
 it is almost impossible to imagine the result on the future 
 of free institutions on this continent. 
 
 The turning point in the history of the American people 
 was when we won the war from Spain in 1898, and by 
 taking over the Philippines became a factor in the Eastern 
 question and the contests between the powers for colonial 
 expansion in the Far East. From that moment Germany 
 and England instituted propaganda campaigns in the United 
 
 10 
 
states. Within the space of a few years three separate 
 attempts were made by England to establish a partnership 
 by so-called Anglo-American alliances, each of which would, 
 in fact, violate Washington's admonition not to become in- 
 volved in the "primary interests and diplomatic intrigues 
 of Europe." And each of which was defeated, largely due 
 to the vigilance of the American Irish. 
 
 After 1900 the necessity for a foreign market for the 
 surplus products of the United States became more and more 
 evident. The speech made by President McKinley at Buffalo 
 a few hours before he was shot, was a solemn warning to the 
 United States of the need to abandon our policy of com- 
 mercial isolation and enter into competition for foreign trade. 
 Roosevelt accepted the McKinley policy, and built the 
 Panama Canal to open up to America the trade of the Orient 
 and to give much-needed encouragement to our merchant 
 marine, an ambition frustrated by Great Britain when it 
 secured, in 1913, through President Wilson, the repeal of the 
 action giving preferential treatment to American ships. 
 
 After 1900, two alien propaganda campaigns were being 
 carried on simultaneously in this country. Germany had 
 obtained world control of the dye industry. It had the 
 monopoly of the world sale of certain American raw mate- 
 rials. It dominated the immigrant steerage traffic. It main- 
 tained a lobby at Washington. It attempted to establish and 
 to a measure succeeded, in spreading by exchange of pro- 
 fessors and skilful propaganda, the idea that Germany was 
 intellectually and scientifically the leader of world thought. 
 
 England was more practical in its propaganda campaign. 
 It saw, long in advance of the rest of the world, and the 
 United States in particular, that, in the coming contest with 
 Germany, after 1890 — marked for commercial slaughter, 
 as Spain, France, Holland and Denmark had been since the 
 16th century. In the words of Cecil Rhodes, to make this 
 certain "the ultimate recovery of the United States of Amer- 
 ica as an integral part of the British Empire" was essential. 
 
 11 
 
Rhodes had started out "to paint the map of the world British 
 red," and, to further the interests of the British Empire, he 
 said he would "annex the very planets if he could." Working 
 with Rhodes in the United States was the late Andrew Car- 
 negie, who said that "as surely as the sun once shone on 
 Britain and America united, so surely it is one morning to 
 rise upon and greet again the re-united States of the British 
 American Union." 
 
 And then came the Great War. When it started, we 
 were selling less American-made shoes and manufactured 
 goods in Europe than we were in 1910. The year before 
 the war started, an investigation by the United States Senate 
 disclosed the fact that a shipping combine, English and 
 German, with a branch in the United States ostensibly under 
 the American flag, had it in its power, from an oflBice in Lon- 
 don, to decree that American citizens could be shut off from 
 overseas trade. It was not possible to start a competing line 
 between North and South America or any European or Orien- 
 tal port. In fact, the right of the United States to foreign 
 trade, except on terms dictated by this alien shipping com- 
 bination, did not exist. It does not today. England controls 
 the seas. 
 
 Commercially, America is in chains, and doomed to slow 
 down production one third or find its wage earners unem- 
 ployed a corresponding period each year. The second of Wil- 
 son's "14 points" was lost on the way to Paris. It 
 is to maintain this sea control that we are being 
 soothed by propaganda, one form of which is to appropri- 
 ate our national heroes. Lord Bryce said, at the dedication 
 of the Lincoln statue in London this year, "He (Lincoln) is 
 as much ours as he is yours." Adams was our ambassador 
 to Great Britain, during the Civil War. Read in his memoirs, 
 and those of his son Henry how the English regarded Lincoln 
 while he was alive. Every infamous slander that could be 
 devised was constantly used against him, yet today "he is 
 as much ours as yours" and Lloyd George is called a second 
 Lincoln. 
 
 12 
 
We elected a President in 1916 because he kept us out 
 of war. Within five months from that time we were at 
 war, and every act of the government since has had the 
 result to keep us out of peace. 
 
 We allowed England through Kathom openly to attack 
 our most distinguished men, and openly to dominate the 
 agencies of publicity; to control the secret service; to create 
 and circulate wholly unfounded scares about a largely 
 mythical enemy-alien agitation; and to segregate into a 
 separate class every person in the United States who dared 
 to hint, what subsequent events have proved, that as England 
 used Germany a hundred years ago to subdue Napoleon and 
 wipe out France as a commercial competitor, and as a hun- 
 dred years later, in 1914, it used France to subdue and wipe 
 out Germany, England's then most important commercial 
 rival, it was inevitable, because gratitude for services does 
 not exist in English diplomacy, that the United States, which 
 had saved England from extinction, in 1917, would, as Eng- 
 land's only remaining commercial rival, be the next nation 
 that England would move ruthlessly to destroy. 
 
 AVhat are the direct present manifestations of British 
 activity in America? The limitations of time compel only 
 the briefest mention of a few of the more important. 
 
 First, the attack on our public schools, proved con- 
 clusively to be under the inspiration and direction of Lord 
 Northcliff, which attempts to change our history text-books 
 to disparage the personalities and motives of the principals 
 in the American Revolution. According to this propaganda, 
 Washington and his colleagues were wrong, and only the 
 leaders of an ignorant, criminal and cruel mob. American 
 Independence was only a sudden thought, and not the result 
 of long growth and development. There was no persistent 
 desire by the colonial patriots for Independence and liberty 
 to work out their own destiny. There was no struggle based 
 on the rights of man. One of the greatest epochs in the 
 forward march of civilization was as if only "an occurrence 
 
 13 
 
in a fairy tale." The American colonies would have been 
 better off fourteen decades ago if they had remained under 
 British rule. The effort is intended to replace the iron 
 chains of Colonial oppression with the gilded ones of Domin- 
 ion allegiance. This proposition is the most impudent 
 affront ever offered to a friendly nation in the history of 
 the world. A similar campaign would not be tolerated 
 for a day by any European nation. It is possible 
 in the United States only because of our lack of knowl- 
 edge of its extent, and our good-natured confidence 
 in our own destiny. This propaganda, is the more repre- 
 hensible because it comes at a time when the nation is con- 
 centrating on an "Americanization" movement to repel the 
 appeal to Bolshevism. To work among aliens to build up 
 respect and loyalty for the United States while a stupen- 
 dous plot is under way to destroy the very thing we are 
 pleading with these aliens to preserve, is wasted effort. We 
 cannot do the one and ignore the other. As Benjamin 
 Franklin said, "Those who give up essential liberty to pur- 
 chase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
 The "revised" history text-book propaganda has been fully 
 exposed. It exists in every American State, but, as the facts 
 are becoming known, is rapidly being put on the defensive 
 everywhere. 
 
 An important auxiliary British propaganda agency is 
 the moving picture. Five American film companies have 
 been absorbed by British capital, and films are usually dis- 
 tributed without charge — Sir Gilbert Parker, who repre- 
 sented Lord Northcliff in the U. S. as publicity agent during 
 the war is now in California, supervising the preparation 
 of propaganda scenarios. The London Times in its issue 
 of September 12th boastiugly stated that 30,000 propaganda 
 films are now being shown in the United States. 
 
 It is also an interesting fact, worthy of mention here, 
 that the American agencies defending and supporting the 
 British inspired "reform" of our school text-books are all 
 imbued with the sinister effort to Bolshevise public school 
 
 14 
 
control, as proposed by the Smith-Towner bill. Ever since 
 our Republic was born it has been obliged to fight against 
 the creation of a caste in a democracy, and if this effort 
 succeeds it can wipe out the spirit of American Nationalism 
 in one generation. 
 
 Another important machine of propaganda is the occas- 
 ion of the Tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
 In this we are seeing an extension of this same attack upon 
 fundamental and long-held American beliefs. The band of 
 religious enthusiasts wKb, for their souls' peace, crossed the 
 seas in the "Mayflower" in 1620 are, in this tercentenary 
 year, being transformed. "They have suffered a sea change 
 into something new and strange.'' With one wave of the 
 pro-British wand they have become pioneers of British im- 
 perialism, conscious carriers of the blessings of Anglo-Saxon 
 civilization to the then almost unknown continent of America 
 and progenitors of the pro-British propagandists of today. 
 
 We must excuse some of the enthusiasm of people who, 
 having little to be proud of in their present life, are 
 desperately anxious to hitch themselves to a past of some 
 significance; but there is absolutely nothing in the story of 
 the Pilgrims to justify the new interpretation put upon 
 their journey to this country three centuries ago. 
 
 In cold fact, who were they? A party of men and women, 
 of what might l>e called today, the English lower middle-class, 
 who had become dissatisfied with the rule and ritualism of 
 the Church of England and had formed a congregation of 
 their own, evolving a form of belief and worship based, as 
 they believed, more truly upon the Bible. In order not to 
 have their peculiar tenets interfered with they left England, 
 at first for Holland, but not liking the environment there 
 and hoping, also, to better themselves economically, they 
 took ship for America, landing, by chance, at that part of 
 Massachusetts which years before had been called Plymouth 
 on the map of John Smith. 
 
 Against these brave-hearted men and women, no one of 
 
 IS 
 
us today wants to utter a word. Deprecating their narrow- 
 ness of religious belief and polity, we may still admire their 
 virtues of pluck and endurance. But it is the height of 
 absurdity for the tercentenary celebrators of today, to try to 
 make out that these people were the advance guard of British 
 imperialism, or that they came bearing with them the sacred 
 fire of "freedom" which they had received, in setting out, 
 from Britannia herself. 
 
 The facts in the case are that they were, in a very real 
 sense, rebels against the power and policy of their own 
 country, very glad to escape from under the heel of her 
 economic and religious oppression, very resentful of the 
 continuous attempt made to control them by the Stuarts, 
 Cromwell and Hanoverians from the time of their arrival 
 here, and up to the Revolution, and very much concerned, 
 not, with extending the power of the Crown, but with attend- 
 ing to their own affairs and working out their own salva- 
 tion — religious, political and economic. 
 
 It would be a great surprise to the Pilgrim Fathers if 
 they could now be told that they were stirred by the ''Anglo- 
 Saxon impulse," and they would have been equally surprised 
 if someone had prophesied to them that the nation whose 
 king had "harried them out of the land" would, in three 
 hundred years, be claiming them as fully-accredited emis- 
 saries of British ideas. 
 
 This view of the Pilgrim incident in America's history 
 fits in with British propaganda in other directions. If it 
 can be shown that the very Fathers of the first Massachusetts 
 colony had the same concepts of the mission of the British 
 Empire as those held today by Lloyd George and Sir Auck- 
 land Geddes, of course the rest is easy. 
 
 This, then, is a deliberate attempt on the part of Great 
 Britain to Anglicize the tercentenary celebration. Honest 
 Americans who love the lime-light and delight in English 
 approval are being used to further this attempt. As to this 
 there is no doubt in the world. Evidence of it accumulates. 
 
 16 
 
British officials are active in it, although it is interesting 
 to note that the Pilgrim celebration in England, so far a*s 
 the English people themselves are concerned, has fallen very 
 flat indeed, the reason for this being that the Pilgrim Fathers 
 are almost unknown to the British people. If they ever 
 think of them at all, it is as a queer set of people who, being 
 out of step with the rest of their countrymen, fled away to 
 America, and "good riddance to them." 
 
 Another principal object of British propaganda is to 
 build up and extol a mythical Anglo-Saxon race, and to 
 monopolize, for England's sole credit, every worthy act done 
 in the world by any person speaking the English language — 
 exactly as the term "Scotch Irish" was invented to shut the 
 great majority of the Irish race from all credit for notable 
 achievement in any department of human affairs. This prop- 
 aganda has enlisted in this country an army of "Near 
 Americans," one of whom has clearly stated the purpose 
 of the Anglo-Saxon campaign. President Nicholas Murray 
 Butler, of Columbia University, described what he calls the 
 "Anglo-Saxon Impulse," in the London Times (July 4, 
 1919) : 
 
 "Nothing seems to me more clear than that the world 
 desperately needs for its leadership, guidance and safety, 
 precisely those qualities of mind and character, known 
 in modern history as Anglo-Saxon. It is the extraor- 
 dinary persistence of the Anglo-Saxon impulse which 
 brought America into existence, * * * it is the 
 underlying and controlling fact in Alnerican life. It has 
 furnished the warp through which the shuttle of time 
 and change has woven the threads which make American 
 historv. 
 
 ft/ 
 
 / "Despite the large Irish, German, Slavic, Italian, 
 
 Scandinavian and Jewish additions to the original 
 American population, the Anglo-Saxon impulse holds 
 its own. In America it is repeating, on a larger scale, 
 the history of England, and it is drawing to itself sup- 
 
 17 
 
port and strength from the other and varied nationalities 
 that are here joined to it." 
 
 This is the most extraordinary misstatement of fact 
 probably ever made by an American, the more so because it 
 seems deliberately designed to disparage the United States, 
 and especially to take away from the 75% of the population 
 which are not English even by remote connection all credit 
 for the progress of this country. This "Anglo-Saxon im- 
 pulse" myth discredits the influence of the Spanish in 
 Florida ; the Huguenots in Virginia ; the Swedes in Delaware 
 and New Jersey ; the Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania ; 
 and the Irish in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. If 
 there ever was an Anglo-Saxon impulse influencing human 
 affairs it has not operated for a thousand years. This being 
 true, everything based on this myth falls flat. It is at best 
 a pleasing phrase used freely without understanding. Its 
 serious use by any person claiming to be educated is proof 
 absolute either of superficiality, or a desire to fall in with 
 the anti-American program, and to encourage and support 
 its general adoption. 
 
 We are finding in the United States today a skillful 
 propaganda calculated to stir animosity against Japan, like- 
 wise against France. An inspired propaganda produced 
 mobs in New York to protest against German opera, 
 months after opera in Grerman was being sung in London 
 and in Paris. We are still at war with Germany, which 
 is anxious to resume with us the trade relations which are 
 going on with England. Russia, our traditional friend, has 
 been manipulated into a position of enmity to the United 
 States. Italy resents our hostile British-inspired attitude. 
 An anti-United States trade campaign inspired by Great 
 Britain has been going on for more than a year in South 
 America. Our past friendly relations with China are a 
 liability instead of an asset. 
 
 The American people will do well to deliberate care- 
 fully before they accept at face value accusations against 
 
 18 
 
the United States Shipping Board, and if wrong-doing is 
 shown, as may be possible, to remember that Admiral Ben- 
 son, who has become a particular object of foreign enmity 
 because of his inflexible Americanism, did not come into 
 power until after the Armistice and subsequent to the award- 
 ing of substantially all ship-building contracts. The ex- 
 posures by Admiral Benson and Matthew Brush, in charge 
 of the Hog Island shipyards, of British attempts to cripple, 
 by unfair discrimination, and to increase the cost of our 
 merchant marine gives sufficient incentive for the utilization 
 of existing anti-American propaganda agencies to discredit 
 our merchant marine before the American people. 
 
 Another propaganda campaign under the direction of 
 Sir George Paish is working to have the United States 
 cancel our war loans to the Allied powers, on which inciden- 
 tally no interest has been paid. If this is done, it means 
 that England will save |5,000,000,000, and the burden of 
 110,000,000,000 will fall on the United States, or, translated 
 into the cost on each individual of a gift to England and 
 the Allies of |500 from each family in the United States. 
 
 On the other hand, there is imperative need for England 
 to crave and secure, if possible, the support of the United 
 States in its present undertakings. As the chief result of 
 the war, from which, with hypocritical emphasis, it alleged 
 it did not seek an added foot of territory, it emerges with 
 control over one-half of the earth's arable surface, all of 
 the seas, and one-third of the earth's people, with control of 
 the agencies of news and of business, the cables and wireless, 
 with physical possession of the trade routes to the East; 
 with ownership of the future fuel-oil resources of the world ; 
 and, most important, with imperial dominance over the areas 
 upon which the world must depend for its daily food. Eng- 
 land is now engaged in the life and death struggle to hold all 
 these gains and looks to the United States of America to be 
 her prop as junior partner in her world imperialism. Eng- 
 land sees in Russia, France, Germany, China and even in the 
 land of her partner, Japan, the rapidly gathering clouds of 
 
 19 
 
distrust, suspicion and resentment. In Africa, India, Egypt, 
 Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia, Albania and Ireland, the souls 
 of hundreds of millions of subject peoples are filled with the 
 rising spirit of nationhood. This spirit was kept alive by the 
 Irish race for hundreds of years, when it had almost died out 
 in the rest of the world. It was given rebirth by the Amer- 
 ican Revolution, and two years ago confirmed in its hope of 
 full flower by the apparent success of the altruistic objects 
 for which the United States entered and won the war. Now 
 it is being crushed by a reign of terror furiously enforced by 
 Lloyd George and the leaders of the British Empire. The 
 aspiration for liberty is a part of human nature; it never 
 dies. It may be crushed for another century if the answer 
 of this country is wrong. Can any American doubt what 
 that answer will be? 
 
 Ever since the beginning of the United States of Amer- 
 ica the Irish have been coming here and staying here. It is 
 no disparagement of the contributions which other peoples 
 have made to the development of America to assert that no 
 element more than the Irish has brought hither an affection 
 for the country so free from the alloy of selfishness, so un- 
 mixed with the lingering thought of loyalty to another 
 government. 
 
 This is so in the very nature of the case. The govern- 
 ment from which they fled was an alien government to which 
 they felt they owed no real allegiance, so there was no senti- 
 mental barrier in their souls toward pledging themselves 
 to be loyal to the United States against all other govern- 
 ments, especially against that to which nominally they had 
 belonged. 
 
 They lost no time weighing the advantages and dis- 
 advantages of Ainerican citizenship. It was the only real 
 citizenship they knew, and they accepted its privileges and 
 its opportunities with singular alacrity and gladness. 
 
 The imperial schemes and dreams of Europe had had 
 no influence on them as Irishmen. Still less could such sin- 
 ister attachments affect them as American citizens. 
 
 20 
 
Their love for America has, therefore, been one of extra- 
 ordinary strength and purity. It has had no ulterior motives, 
 in the strict sense, for the sympathy they have always shown 
 toward the struggle for independence of the country of their 
 blood, the hopes they have entertained in her regard and 
 the help they have given have been only another expression 
 of their appreciation of American liberty, and a desire to 
 see that liberty prevail throughout the world. 
 
 Thoroughly imbued with this love for freedom, the Irish 
 element in this country has been absolutely American. The 
 success or failure of no other government save the American 
 government has ever influenced their thought or action. In 
 particular, this freedom from any "entangling alliance" has 
 made them especially keen-sighted when American interests 
 were involved, and especially quick to scent danger in move- 
 ments that too many other Americans had accepted at their 
 face value but which were in reality plots against the very 
 existence of an American spirit and an American state. 
 
 Such an active, clear-sighted love as this for America 
 has not been welcome in some quarters, as is well known, and 
 there has been an attempt to sneer at or cry down as "Irish 
 hatred" manifestation of American patriotism on the part 
 of the Irish element here unless it connects itself with the 
 intertwining of the British flag with the Stars and Stripes 
 and maudlin expressions of "Anglo-Saxon affection." The 
 hyphen in Anglo-Saxon has been consecrated, and the hyphen 
 that binds the American with Ireland execrated. But the 
 only hyphenism of which the Irish in all their history in 
 America can be justly accused is that which properly binds 
 every real human being "to the rock from which he was hewn 
 and the pit from which he was digged." 
 
 When all's said and done, the Irish are in America, a 
 sane and saving influence for the perpetuation of American 
 ideals; and they are not ashamed of standing where the 
 Fathers of the American Eepublic stood in their day, against 
 all attempts to hurt or harm, to minimize or molest the land 
 
 21 
 
to which so many hundreds of thousands of Irishmen and 
 their American sons have, in all her wars, given the full 
 measure of devotion. 
 
 22 
 

 
 » i: 
 
 "Wt — < VI... *. ■**.!»> AJa? , ^^ 
 
 
 * > 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -/ 
 
 
 


 . »- A 
 
 
 o ^. .^ 
 
 
 
 
 * •;^ 
 
 1^ «<k » 
 
 * -b^ o 
 
 
 
 
 ■•^^ x-^'-' ^* 
 
 
 ' * A*' Ow • m/!«Pf^ ♦ «? <£>■ oW^^W * Av VU • ^^IIS * c^ i» 
 
 3K 
 
 3v 
 
 '^-<. • 
 
 ' • o, -^ 
 
 
 * * 'It. * 
 
 
 
 ^ *^ 
 
 V* .^1:^'* e 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing Aoent: Mannpt^inm nviHo 
 ,' Treatment D- 
 
 ^.s: iJllii i^^nia? 
 
 I y; 
 
 <rv ^.^-vi^Cr^* 
 
 1 M 
 
 .1 
 

 ^ 
 
 \'^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 % .^^^,* ^^-^