The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1928. "AMERICA FIRST."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 72, 26 March 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1928. "AMERICA FIRST."

For the eauee that lack* auiatance, For the wrong that need* resittanoe, For the future in the distance, And the good that we oan do.

Encouraged by his success in unseating Mr. W. Mac Andrew, the obnoxious Superintendent of Schools, "Big Bill" Thompson, Mayor of Chicago, is carrying his anti-British crnsade further afield. A motion is now before Congress asking for a large appropriation to investigate American history books, "so as to determine if any an ti-American bias exists, and if they have been influenced by foreign propaganda." The campaign which Mr. Thompson has conducted in Chicago has vastly stimulated the patriotism of those "hundred per cent Americans" who wish above all things to eliminate all foreign elements from social and national life, and more especially to wipe out all traces of the British origin of their country's traditions and institutions.

In the last number of "Current History" Mr. Thompson states 'his own case under the title "Shall We Shatter the Nation's Ideals?" He claims that he has proved to the satisfaction of the very large majority of his constituents that in the histories read by the half million children attending the Chicago schools many American heroes are defamed and others are "treated with the silence of contempt"; that patriotic pictures have been removed from the school walls; and that "League of Nations and World Court propaganda are distributed in the public schools." One of the most impressive charges in Mr. Thompson's indictment is that in several of the condemned histories it is pointed out that George Washington was a rebel, and that having once sworn allegiance to George 111. he was a disloyalist, or, as Mr. Thompson prefers, a "traitor." Several other leaders of the movement for American independence—Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Samuel Adams—are, according to the Mayor of Chicago, either misrepresented or maligned in the history text books, and Mr. Thompson has worked himself up to a lofty pitch of righteous wrath in denouncing these "calumnies and lies.'

But what does Mr. Thompson propose to do about it? Clearly he is not satisfied with the support of his followers in Chicago, but is bent on appealing to a larger audience. It is a curious and interesting fact that in the list of "lost heroes" whom he intends to restore to a fitting place in the current school histories he includes a majority of "Americans" of Irish, Dutch, Polish or German extraction. In other words, Mr. Thompson is appealing to the large foreign element in the United Slates for political sympathy and support. And he is also resolved to exasperate and intensify American public feeling against England and all things British. "Why this rage," he asks, "against an executive of a great American city who is but doing his plain duty? Do foreign Powers plot to do by propaganda what they have been unable to do by armed force? Have some persons the motive and hope of stupendous rewards through the cancellation of foreign war debts? Is an inferior navy the goal sought? Is love for England greater with some than love fdr America?" After all this it should be comparatively easy for us to understand why "Big Bill'" Thompson has aroused so much enthusiasm both inside and outside Chicago in his campaign against "those who defame our national heroes and make assaults on our national institutions."