New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-02-09
FOR THE TRUTH OF HISTORY
A Protest Against Distortion Of Rec
ords by Partisans.

To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: | confess my inability to see
how of itself the fact that in the past
we have had conflicts or agreements
with any belligerent in the present
war demonstrates the rightness or
wrongness Of that belligerents cause
to-day, any more than | can see why,
if we deserved the sympathy OF the
world in our War for independence,
we necessarily deserved the same sym
patty in our war with Mexico.
Merely as a superficial student OF
history, | am especially surprised and
disturbed to learn from numerous let
tiers and articles in The Tribune and
other publications that our first col
lision with Great Britain was all due
to those wicked and insdious Germans.
| believe that it was the witty and
erudite Mr.. G.. X. Chcsterton who first
discovered this important fact, trl-
umphantly showing that our War for
Independence was waged, not with
England, but with Bad German King;
for George III, it now appears, besides
being personally wholly responsible
for the trouble, was purely German
and didn't he employ a few thousand
ing legions? Why, OF course! And he
was probably also an Indian because
he employed Indians, and an American,
because there were so many honest
American Tories under his banners.
The queer part of it is that this willy
and insidous monarch appears to have
been regarded by his subjects, includ-
ing DR.. Samuel Johnson, as pretty
thoroughly English, and my recollec-
ton is that Thackeray, who was also
fairly English, takes somewhat
similar view in his essay on THE Four
Georges" And when those poor peas
ants OF Hesse-Cassel, sold by their
ruler to Great Britain. marched
through Prussia to embark for Amer
lea that other wicked German, Fred
erick the Great $50 it used to be said,
showed what he thought of the whole
transaction by taxing them so much
per head as cattle. Very likely Fred
erick thought that he could use the
money, but. again, he was once reported
70 have been a great admirer OF Wash
ington. In regard 10 those same Hes
SLAMS il is as well to remember that
they were not altogether double DYED
villains; that they did some magnii-
cent, il irrational, fighting. and that a
great many of them married and set
tied down in this country and became
good citizens of the young republic.
am still waiting TO hear that
britannia Rules the Waves is a
chant of German origin and that the
War of 1912 and the attitude Of Of
fetal England mot democratic Eng
land) in our Civil Wa were wholly
due to base German intrigue. The
situation, however, becomes somewhat
complicated by the discovery of NJ.
Jean Finot and other eminent French
authorities that Tennyson was sadly at
fault when he sang OF the English,
Saxon, Norman and Dane are We"
The English, it now appears, are not
basically Teutonic, but are sprung from
the same Celtic root as the French,
and wasn't the most important event
in English history the French invasion
under William the Conqueror? II is
true that had come to believe that
the submerged Celt in the English
racial mixture is too little regarded,
Just as is the powerful Teutonic ele-
ment in the French; but as for Will
lam Of Normandy, well, | had always
understood that he was the true,
atavistic grandson Of that tremendous
old Morse viking Rolf the CANCER, and
that he headed an armv composed
largely of subjects likewise descended