The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-04-05
By STANLEY BOONE

king, insofar as King George III had
anything to do with their own lives.
The Americans had no feudal aris-
tocracy to dispense but they flew in
stead in the face of an empire ira
dition. 1t may be assumed that the
American revolutionaries were po-
tentially regicides. Even in revo-
lutionary France the execution Of
the royal family was not originally
part of the Republican program.
The French Republican program
was not clarified until three years
after the Bastile fell. Altogether
the French Revolution was the
younger European cousin of our own.
On the site Of the Bastile the
French have dedicated a tablet to
Thomas Paine.
Sorrow is not exactly what a man
feels in contemplating the cowardice,
the hypocrisy, the conceit, the SEN
ility and the intellectual torpor which
gave rise to the making and per-
fecting Of the myths and accessory
falsifcations, myths either emascu-
lated or vicious, in the shadow and
venom Of which the rising genera
tons have to grow.
Useful Tradition.
It has taken less than $50 years
in the United States for the increas-
ingly parasitical bourgeoisie to APP
propriate their ancestral past to
their own ends. But in all that time
there has been no structural eco
nomic or political charge in this
country to influence the growth Of
these propaganda myths which we
now have. The Civil War was a
national upheaval but it was bour-
geois war, anachronistic in its aboli-
: ton of slavery. And the contrast
between the American and French
propaganda biographies and histor-
ical studies is undoubtedly largely
due to the changes which, on the
contrary, have taken place in France
since the work Of the Jacobin revo-
lutionists was done.
After the French Revolution came
the Thermidorian reaction, followed
by the Directory and the first En-
= pire. And after the first Empire
q state came the two later Empire
r states, one under Napoleon / and
one under Napoleon III, in addition
? to the three intervening reservations
a of the monarchy, under Louis XVIII,
!, Charles x and Louis-P PHILIPPE. Each
e of these periods left its influence on
; the transmitted accounts of the
i revolution.
Falsifying the Record.
g To escape political imprisonment
e at the hand of one or another of the
succeeding emperors or monarchs,
perjuries were committed by men
and women who had reliable ac-
= counts to give, while the official re-
= dictionary spokesman, either in ODE
/ dienee to or in support of a govern
/ ment censorship, poured forth their
speeches and their books in defama-
ton of their great predecessors.
Napoleon / saved a part Of the
fruits of the revolution by organic
ing France against any permanent
! return of the Bourbons. Neverthe-
less, he seemed to find it to his adj
!, vantage, as the imperial savior, to
! smother and bury away from the
public gaze whatever was glorious in
= the events out Of which, as a bril-
- liant artilleryman, he grew. To the
same end there was undertaking into
the lives of the men and women Of
the Jacobin Club, many of whom as
consequence have had to stand OF
fall, in the estimation of posterity, in
proportion to their reputed respec.
/, tive abilities to hold a cup of tes
~ in a refined Girondian or royalisi
salon.
r Betsy Ross, of the United States
is idealized. Whatever her character
was in fact, her reputation today ha
G. been so manufactured that children
may safely be allowed to love her
But Theroigne de Mericourt, I
young Partisan Mother Jones o
1r 1889, is held now to have been les
8. patriotic, in the sense of that day
or than immoral" Thus in Franc
the heroes are not preposterousl,
IN made angels or saints, and claime'
hxy tho hourOaoieio no som athinoe fa