THE TEXT-BOOK POISON IN CANADIAN-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP BY W. S. WALLACE A generation ago Goldwin Smith, schul's investigations. Mr. Altschul that great apostle of better relations between Canada and the United States, wrote: "Too many American histories are hardly more trustworthy than those of the Celestial Empire. The historian is always on the stump, and ministering to national vanity. and passion. The school histories among the rest are, or until lately were, without exception, most poisonous food for young minds; and there can be no doubt that they have produced their effect on the character of the nation." In this general indictment he included not only the histories of the United States but also those of Canada. He allowed no opportunity to pass of smiting with impartial hand both the Anglophobia too often found in the one, and the United Empire Loyalist rancor found in the other. He said bluntly of Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge's "Washington", for instance, that it was filled with the "spirit of Elijah Pogram"; and when Dr. Egerton Ryerson, a venerable figure in Canadian public life, produced a history of "The Loyalists of America", he asked pertinently: "Are we to be dragged again through the history of this old quarrel, with all its heel-taps and afterclaps? Are these smouldering ashes of hatred to be raked anew?" The testimony thus borne by "the Oxford Professor" has recently obtained signal corroboration, so far as the history text-books of the United States are concerned, in Mr. Alt has subjected to a patient analysis no less than ninety-three history textbooks that are, or have been, in use in the elementary schools of the United States. Forty of these books were in use over twenty years ago. Of these no less than thirty-two, used in no less than one hundred and nineteen centers, display a more or less pronounced Anglophobia; whereas only eight books, used in fifteen centers, preserve even a moderately fair attitude toward Great Britain. The later group, comprising fifty-three books in use today, shows a slight improvement. Of these, thirty-three books used in one hundred and twenty-three centers display varying degrees of Anglophobia; whereas twenty, used in sixty-eight centers, are more or less impartial. Welcome as this improvement is, it still leaves very much to be desired. In the two groups it is possible to count on the fingers of one hand those books that point out that, in the American Revolution, the claims of Great Britain were, at their worst, only the ordinary claims of mother countries upon their colonies at that time. It is evident, therefore, that a very high percentage of those who have passed through the schools of the United States must have learned to regard the attitude of George III and his ministers as unusual and exceptional; and a very considerable majority must have imbibed a feeling of actual hatred toward Great Britain. One is tempted to suspect that the historian of the future, coming across the lines: Hate by water and hate by land, * We love as one, we hate as one, might easily fall into the trap of attributing them to an American author of the nineteenth century. With regard to Canadian history text-books, figures are unfortunately not available. But no one who is familiar with them will deny that they reveal an equally deplorable state of affairs. The only difference is that the animus displayed in them is directed particularly against the United States, whereas the animus in American schoolbooks is directed primarily against "England", and only secondarily against Canada. Indeed, in many United States histories no animus against Canada appears; instead there is a tendency to ignore the existence of Canada as though it were uninhabited an attitude more galling to a small and sensitive people than hatred itself. But in Canadian histories there is no doubt about the existence of the United States. The Great Republic overshadows the story of Canada from title-page to colophon. From the American invasion of Canada in 1775, when the American Revolutionists in the spirit of Rousseau sought to compel Canadians to be free, down to the reciprocity negotiations of 1911, when at least one prominent American politician uttered some illadvised words regarding the political destiny of Canada, the menace of the United States has colored the writing of Canadian history. It has led to a bitter and morbid treatment of many episodes in the relations between the two countries; it has magnified ten fold, for instance, the importance of the War of 1812; and it has encouraged, curiously enough, a foolish depreciation of the qualities of the American people. A confession of this is made by Mr. Macdonald in "The North American Idea", a series of lectures delivered by a Canadian before an American audience. Speaking of the hardships and the injustices suffered by the United Empire Loyalists, Mr. Macdonald frankly admits that "the human elements in the story, as illustrating personal heroism or fidelity or noble sacrifice, have their permanent value, but in the hands of the story-tellers in school text-books their exaggerations and misplaced emphasis have done little but damage in North America's civilization". The trouble is that both Canada and the United States have at the head of their history two events, the American Revolution and the War of 1812, that are fertile breedinggrounds of international enmity. Family quarrels are notoriously more bitter than other quarrels; and both these events partook of that character. The American Revolution, as John Fiske pointed out, was a phase of English party politics; and it was rather a civil war than a revolution. One of the parties to the civil war founded the United States; the other laid the basis of English-speaking Canada; and thus the two countries were dedicated at the outset to the perpetuation of an ancient feud, in which their true interests have too often been forgotten. Nothing could be more instructive than the traditional attitude adopted in each country toward the Loyalists of the Revolution. In the United States they have long been regarded with the aversion expressed by that poetaster In Canada they have been the objects of an uncritical veneration which has resembled primitive ancestor-worship. With such diverse traditions in each country, it was hardly to be expected that the feud would easily die out; and indeed the War of 1812 was, so far as Canada was concerned, merely a revival of the vendetta. Surely the time has come when the people of Canada and the United States can come to a consensus of opinion even with regard to these events. The American Revolution was a struggle between two conflicting principles which had in it something of the inevitable character of a Greek tragedy. Each side, from its own point of view, was right. The Tory or Loyalist point of view had much to be said for it; and it is interesting and hopeful that nowhere has this point of view been put more clearly and forcibly than by the modern school of scientific American historians. Just as much may be said for the Whig or Revolutionist standpoint. The people of 1776 did not find it as easy to choose between the two camps as many of their descendants have found it. "I have been struck", wrote Lorenzo Sabine, the Whig historian of the Loyalists, "in the course of my investigations, with the absence of fixed principles, not only among people in the common walks of life, but in many of the prominent personages of the day." Apart from the extremists on both sides, a great many people wavered long and sadly in their choice; and when they made it, it was frequently dictated by social, financial, or even religious considerations, only partly connected with the political issues at stake. Nor should it be forgotten that, when the rival parties took shape, a very considerable body of public opinion in England disapproved of the course of the British government, and from one-third to one-half of the American people disapproved of the proceedings of the second Continental Congress. Indeed, in the opinion of the distinguished English historian Lecky, the Revolution "was the work of an energetic minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little love, and leading them step by step to a position from which it was impossible to recede". Nor need the vexed question of the Loyalists prove a stumbling-block. It must be admitted that the Loyalists were guilty during the war of some unpleasant atrocities. But so were some of the Revolutionists. No one can take pride in tracing descent to the worst of the Green Mountain boys, any more than to Bloody Bill Cunningham and his gang or to the raiders of Cherry Valley. And it is fair to remember that the Loyalists had been driven from their homes, that their property had been confiscated, and that they and their families had been subjected to persecution. They would have been hardly human had they not waged a mimic warfare. At the same time, it is no more surprising that after the war the victorious Revolutionists treated the Loyalists with scant generosity. They too would have been hardly human had they done otherwise. Neither the Loyalists nor the Revolutionists were inhuman fiends: it is significant that the American Revolu tion furnished no September massacres, no Reign of Terror. They were merely men fashioned like unto ourselves, actuated by very human motives. In particular, it is absurd to regard them as a sort of legendary heroes. They were Loyalists or Revolutionists, as a rule, out of selfinterest, or because of previous ties, or because they thought they had picked the winning side, like that Loyalist who wrote from the wilds of New Brunswick in 1788: "I have made one great mistake in politics, for which reason I never intend to make so great a blunder again". As for the War of 1812, it would be well could it be erased forever from the tablets of North American history. No more futile and meaningless war ever broke the Truce of God. It arose from nothing, it decided nothing; and out of nothing nothing comes. For the last century or more Canada and the United States have been at peace. Much has been made of this hundred years' peace. The fact that Canadians and Americans have lived together for that time on either side of an international boundary line three thousand odd miles long, and destitute of forts or warships, is frequently pointed to as an objectlesson in international amity. Great preparations were made for celebrating the centennial of peace between the two countries in 1915; and only the outbreak of the European war prevented the celebration from being profoundly impressive. It was in connection with this centennial that Mr. Dunning's review of the relations between Great Britain and the United States was issued. There is perhaps a danger in this fiction of the pax Americana that the people of North America may take credit to themselves where credit is not due. If two peoples, sprung from the same stock, speaking the same language, and having similar political ideals, have succeeded in living side by side for a century without coming to blows, their achievements may not necessarily be regarded as bordering on the marvelous. As a matter of fact, peace between Canada and the United States during the last hundred years has never been quite complete or secure. Repeatedly the two countries have been on the verge of war. At the time of the Oregon boundary dispute in 1846, when the American presidential elections, had been fought and won on the platform of "fifty-four forty or fight", nothing but an eleventh-hour compromise averted hostilities. At the time of the Trent affair in 1861, the crisis was even more acute. And on several occasions, notably in 1838 and in 1866, the soil of the United States was used as the starting point for filibustering expeditions against Canada on the part of Canadian revolutionaries or Irish-American Fenians. Nor was the preservation of peace on these occasions due, as Lord Bryce suggests in his introduction to Mr. Dunning's book, to the good sense of the common people. At the time of the Trent episode, for instance, the people on both sides clamored for war; and only the wiser counsels of Seward and Lincoln, and of Lyons and the Prince Consort, prevented it. In 1838 and in 1866, too, the invaders of Canada had the sympathy of the American border population; and only the somewhat belated enforcement of the neutrality laws by the authorities put an end to further mischief. To realize how far short of brotherly kindness the relations between the two countries have fallen, one need only review, as Mr. Dunning does, the history of the interminable fishery squabbles between them, the repeated boundary disputes, or the acrimonious trade relations. Even the last few years have furnished an example of the latent antagonism between the two countries. During the first two and a half years of the European war, when Canadian volunteers were fighting and dying in Flanders fields, and the United States was clinging to her neutrality, there sprang up in Canada a feeling against the United States, the depth of which Americans will fortunately know. never For the bad blood which has thus marred the relations between the two democracies of North America, the writers of history and especially the writers of history schoolbooks must bear a large share of the blame. Too many of them have confused the attitude of the historian with that of the dancing dervish. Until our school histories have been revised, it is idle to expect a permanent improvement in the relations of the two countries. With a public opinion poisoned at the fountain-head, anything is possible. Nor will sanitary measures taken farther down the stream prove wholly efficacious. One is glad to see Mr. Dunning's scholarly and impartial treatise; one is glad to see Mr. Macdonald's "The North American Idea", a series of lectures delivered at Vanderbilt University in 1917, which have as their object the promotion of good feeling between Canada and the United States; and one is es pecially glad to see the history of North America told from a popular standpoint with such attractiveness and dispassionateness as in the two series known as "The Chronicles of Canada" and "The Chronicles of America". These chronicles, if placed in the school libraries, might well serve to correct the bias of the official text-books. But at best none of these publications can begin to reach the vast numbers who derive their knowledge of the past mainly from the schoolhouse. Among such as these, nothing but text-bock reform will suffice; and this is long overdue. It would be a matter for congratulation if the American Historical Association, which includes in its membership not only the foremost American historians, but also many of the foremost Canadian historians, would institute an Index Expurgatorius of history schoolbooks that promote international discord, and urge on the educational authorities of both countries the appropriateness of revising them or discarding them altogether. It would not be amiss, indeed, if all such books were gathered together and burned in public, as the vanities were burnt in Florence in the time of Savonarola. The American Revolution in Our School Text Books. By Charles Altschul. George H. Doran Company. The North American Idea. By James A. Macdonald. Fleming H. Revell Co. The British Empire and the United States: a Review of their Relations during the Century of Peace following the Treaty of Ghent. By W. A. Dunning. Charles Scribner's Sons. The Chronicles of Canada. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook and Co. The Chronicles of America. Yale University Press. |