A Straight Deal; Or, The Ancient Grudge

first, one suggestion. Most of us, if we dig back only fifty or sixty or seventy years, can

ever made a scandal, broke a heart, or betrayed a trust? Every man Jack and woman Jill of the lot right back to Adam and Eve wholly good, honorable, and courageous

ancestor; that all sorts of virtue and vice, of heroism and disgrace, are mingled in our blood; t

k pages of our record, and never come upon a single blot? Indeed you cannot. And it is better-a great deal better-that you should be aware of these blots. Such

d magnanimity that we have shown to Cuba, I have yet to learn of it. They jeered at us about Cuba, did the Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck their tongues in their cheeks. Of course our fine sentiments were all sham, they said. Of course we int

sixteen millions. It was we who prevented levying a punitive indemnity on China. Read the whole story; there is much more. We played the gentleman, Europe played the bully. But Europ

in Paris lately? What did we ask for ourselves? Everything we asked, save some repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, yes! we are quite good enou

ll be that school textbooks help this inclination to dislike. Certainly we know what contempt and hatred for other nations the Germans have been sedulously taught in their schools, and how utterly they believed their teaching. How much better and wiser for the whole world if all the boys and girls in all the schools everywhere were henceforth to be started in life with a just and true notion of all flags and the peoples over whom they f

declaring war against Great Britain in 1812 were not so strong as they had been three and four years earlier? That during those years England had moderated her arrogance, was ready to moderate further, had placated us for her brutal performance concerning the Chesapeake, wanted peace; while we, who had been nearly unanimous for war, and with a fuller purse in 1808, were now, by our own congressional fuddling and messing, without any adequate army, and so divided in counsel that only one northern state was wholly in favor of war? Did you know that our General Hull began by invading Canada from Detroit and surrendered his w

that this was uncommonly lucky for us-as lucky quite as those ships from France under Admiral de Grasse, without whose help Washington could never have caught Cornwallis and compelled his surrender at Yorktown, October 19, 1781. Did you know that there were

Well, there is more to know than that, and I found it out much later. I found out that General Grant, who had fought with credit as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, briefly summarized it as "iniquitous." I gradually, through my reading as a man, learned the truth about the Mexican War which had not been taught me as a boy-that in that war we bullied a weaker power, that we made her our victim, that the whole discre

ntelligently because we know these faults, so our love of our country would be just as strong, and far more intelligent, were we honestly and wisely taught in our early years those acts and policies of hers wherein she fell below her lofty and humane ideals. Her characte