Production Note
Cornell University Library produced this
volume to replace the irreparably
deteriorated original. It was scanned using
Xerox software and equipment at 600 dots per
inch resolution and compressed prior to
storage using CCITT Group 4 compression. The
digital data were used to create Cornell's
replacement volume on paper that meets the
ANSI Standard Z39.48-1984. The production of
this volume was supported in part by the New
York State Program for the Conservation and
Preservation of Library Research Materials
and the Xerox Corporation. Digital file
copyright by Cornell University Library
1994.THE
PEACE CENTENARY
ON THE GREAT LAKES AND
THE NIAGARA FRONTIERTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE
IN RELATION TO THE REGION OF THE
NIAGARA AND THE GREAT LAKES
BY FRANK H. SEVERANCE1
On Christmas eve, of the year 1814, in the stately refec-
tory of the Carthusian monastery in the famous city of
Ghent, there assembled a small but distinguished group of
men, British and American. Lord Gambier, afterwards
Admiral of the British Navy, hero of great sea fights,
headed the British delegation. Chief among the American
representatives was John Quincy Adams, at that time our
Minister to Russia; and his associates were Jonathan
Russell, the American Minister to Sweden; Senator James
A. Bayard, and Henry Clay, Member of Congress; with
Albert Gallatin, Financial Secretary—perhaps the ablest
financier who ever gave his talents to the service of this
country. The occasion was the close of deliberations and.
1. An address originally prepared for and delivered before the Interna-
tional Congress, American Medico-Psychological Association, at the Clifton House,
Niagara Falls, Ont., June 13, 1913; also given with minor adaptations, before
the London and Middlesex Historical Society, London, Ont., Oct. 28, 1913;
at a joint meeting of the Liberal Club of Dunkirk and the Monday Club of
Fredonia; and, in Buffalo, before the Catholic Professional Club; Buffalo
Chapter, Society of Colonial Wars; Buffalo Chapter, Son® of the Revolution;
Buffalo Chapter, Daughters of the War of 1812, and other organizations; and
on April 7, 1914, before the Buffalo Historical Society, in the form as here
printed. Although the war era into which the world ha® since plunged, has
so radically changed the peace prospects, it seems proper to include this paper
in the present collection as given to the Society in the spring of 1914.
145146
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
conferences which had extended over five months; there
had been difficulties and differences—grave differences; but
now, on the eve of the anniversary when all Christendom
renews its consecration to the service of the Prince of
Peace, differences were put aside, rancour ceased, and the
Commissioners of Great Britain and the United States
signed the Treaty of Ghent. To this hour, well nigh a cen-
tury after, that treaty between the two great English-speak-
ing peoples remains unbroken.
In considering the approach of this centenary, so signif-
icant in our history—in world history, even—my thought
has turned to its relation to our home history, to the events
of this mid-lake and Niagara region in which we live, with
the history of which the Buffalo Historical Society is
especially concerned. It has seemed to me a fitting time to
glance backward over the period of white man’s occupancy
here, and discover if possible if we dwellers by these Lakes
have any particular interest in, or reason for sharing in,
the celebration of this century of peace.
And here, at the outset, is a striking thing: We have
had peace for a hundred years, since the signing of the
Treaty of Ghent. Before that, for more than a century and
a half—yes, from earliest recorded time—the story of this
region is a story of strife, of wilderness warfare. True,
the first chapter in our home history records a mission of
peace. In many parts of the world, even of our own
America, the beginning of history is the record of warfare
or of exploration, for conquest, or the quest for gold. Not
so here. The first white men who came among the abori-
gines in this land of the Lakes were Christian priests, who
brought hither the cross of Christ. Their message was one
of peace and good-will. It is true of this region that the
altar was built before the hearth; here the cross was raisedTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
147
before the sword was drawn. But how short and futile was
this effort, the history of the early missions records. It
was a gleam of sunshine at the dawn of a dark and stormy
day; then the clouds shut down, and for a century and a
half the story of these lakes and bordering lands is a story
of strife.
I am tempted, but must not yield to the impulse, to dwell
on the earliest history. It is in high degree picturesque and
romantic. As one studies the old days there passes before
his vision a motley procession—of saintly priests, black
robed or brown, with their portable altars op their backs;
gallant, strange-clad soldiers, explorers, voyageurs, cou-
reurs-de-bois—even the red Indian himself. They play
their varied parts in this our early drama, and pass each to
his place along the horizon of the imagination. These are
our early history.
The trouble really began with an inoffensive little animal,
ingenious and peace-loving in its habits, whose only indis-
cretion was that it wore too good a coat.
It was no more zeal to carry the gospel to savage tribes,
no more desire for acquiring new realms, than it was a
craving to profit by the beaver trade that drew the white
man into this rich wilderness. The Cabinet at Versailles
and the Ministry at Whitehall, when they considered things
American, thought and planned in terms of the beaver.
There has probably been as much strife over fur as there
has been over gold. Indeed, the early history of our region
may fairly be typified by a beaver-skin, held by an Indian,
a Dutchman, a Frenchman and an Englishman, each trying
to pull it away from the others, each white man ready to
placate and deceive the red man with fine promises and
firewater, and each equally ready to stick a knife into his
brothers’ back.148
THE CENTENARY, OF PEACE.
The minor weapons of this early warfare were toma-
hawk and scalping knife, musket and brass cannon. But
the main armament was the Frenchman’s brandy and the
Englishman’s rum ; the latter, according to Governor Don-
gan, most delightfully choleric of Colonial governors,
being “esteemed by Christians as the more wholesome."
Both were alike deadly to the unaccustomed savage, and to
their efficiency was due the profit of the fur trade—and
incidentally, and ultimately, the practical extinction of both
beaver and Indian.
The French, you will recall, were the first explorers of
this region and controlled its trade approximately for a
century. It was exclusively a fur trade and the beaver,
long since extinct hereabouts, was the one great staple.
When, in 1679, La Salle built the Griffon, that pioneer
vessel of the Lakes above the Falls, it was not merely to
carry forward his project of exploration, but it was with a
thrifty purpose of trading in furs. Disaster overtook that
first venture, but did not deter others from repeating the
attempt.
But France was not allowed for long to enjoy a monopoly
of so profitable a traffic. La Salle was still pushing his dis-
coveries in the southwest when, in 1685, the jealous English
sent to these Lakes their first expedition. It was in the
English interest, although its leader was a Dutchman, one
Johannes Roseboom, an Albany trader. He was the first
white man not French or in French interest, known to have
visited this Lake region. The story of his adventure as told
in old documents, is too long to detail at this time. With a
small company, a part of them friendly Indians, he made a
rapid advance in canoes through Lakes Erie and Huron,gave
to the native tribes their first taste of the Englishman’s rum,
and with canoes well laden with peltries made his way backTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
149
to Albany. The English were so delighted at this success
that the next year, 1686, another expedition was sent out.
Roseboom accompanied it, but its leader was a Scotch
colonel by name of Magregorie. Disaster overtook them.
They were captured by the French, narrowly escaped death
at the hands of the Indians, their goods were confiscated,
and they were brought back with a. great escort of exultant
savages under the leadership of the French.
It is a picture which the imagination may be allowed to
dwell upon; the triumphant French, with their English and
Dutch prisoners in thongs, under guard, and none too ten-
derly cared for; the horde of exultant and painted savages
from the north and west. The advance was by canoe, a
picturesque train of crowded barques, the brown warriors
making the wooded walls of Lake Erie echo with their
cries. French, Dutch, English and Indians together, it was
the greatest on-coming of the white man the lake region had
ever seen. No such throng had attended the advent of
La Salle, eight years before, or the arduous progress of the
missionary priests in the earlier years.
There follow a series of expeditions, some familiar to
the student of history, others little known, but always pre-
senting a phase of war. From Quebec and Montreal,
Kingston and Fort Niagara, these little armies of adven-
turous Frenchmen.came into Lake Erie. One of them, in
1749, led by De Celoron, whose name we keep on the Chau-
tauqua county map, made his landing at old Barcelona, near
Westfield, cut a road for his men and boats over the hill—
the first white man’s work in Chautauqua county—and
voyaged through Chautauqua lake down into the Ohio,
burying leaden plates and raising standards to claim the
country for the King of France. Other and stronger ex-
peditions found the bay and peninsula of Presqu’ Isle, now150
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
Erie, and made the portage by way of Waterford and
Le Boeuf.
Then came the war which in 1760 cost Louis XV. his
whole splendid possession of New France. On this frontier
the decisive action was the capture of Fort Niagara in July,
1759. When that stronghold fell, all the chain of forts
between it and the Ohio was abandoned. As our beloved
Holmes has summed it up—the true poet, you know, can
put more into a single line than the plodding historian into
many pages—
“The lilies trembled where the Lion trod.”
The lily-strewn standards of France were brought low, and
the cross of St. Andrew and St. George flew above the
British garrisons up and down the St. Lawrence, along the
far shores of the Great Lakes and in the wilderness of the
Ohio.
You note perhaps that I said, “the cross of St. Andrew
and St. George/’ Great Britain’s emblem at that time was
the double cross; the cross of St. Michael had not yet been
added to the Union Jack, though we know that many Irish-
men fought on this frontier and by such fighting helped win
the Great Lakes and the mid-Continent from France. In-
deed, the commander for the British who compelled the
surrender of Fort Niagara was Sir William Johnson, per-
haps the most influential Irishman who ever helped make
American history. When you recall certain Irish gentle-
men who have been pretty active in the later history of
New York State, you will agree that I put the case for Sir
William strong enough to suit his warmest admirer.
The story of our region under the British continues to be
a story of strife. This entire region was officially surren-
dered by the French in 1760. Three years later, PontiacTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
151
raised the hatchet and there were massacres east and west.
To this period, on our frontier, belongs the tragedy of the
DeviPs Hole. It was the last organized effort of the Indian
to withstand the encroachments of the whites east of the
Mississippi. It failed, and the next year came John Brad-
street, a sturdy British soldier, to compel the beaten tribes
to acknowledge the supremacy of Great Britain in so-called
peace treaties. They talked of peace, but there was never
an hour when the spirit of resentment did not burn.
Later, when the tribes saw that it was greatly to their
advantage to accept the offerings of the British, they became
venial and greedy allies in the war against the American
patriots. The years preceding that war, although nominally
years of peace, were never years of security to the white
man in this region. Great Britain strove to retain enough
good will on the part of the native tribes, to permit her to
maintain her garrisons on the Lakes and allow her traders
to gather the furs. By the time the New Englanders had
thrown the tea overboard in Boston harbor and had rebelled
against England and shot down her soldiers at Concord,
Lexington and Bunker Hill, here on the Great Lakes the
British were in absolute control, and British map-makers
were carrying the boundary line of Canada as far south as
the Ohio.
We sometimes forget, as we read the story of the Revo-
lution, that the American patriots, or, if you please, rebels
—“rebel” may be a very good word—we forget that the
Americans in the old seaboard colonies, not only faced the
might of Great Britain’s army and navy, but they were
hemmed in at the back of their settlements by a wilderness
which was not merely savagely hostile and inhospitable, but
was claimed as British territory and garrisoned by British
arms.152
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
The alliance which the British made in this region with
the Indians gave to warfare its most ferocious and cruel
aspect. At Kingston, at Oswego, at Fort Niagara, Detroit,
Mackinaw, and elsewhere, the King of England extended
the hand of a father to his savage allies, called them his
children, fed and clothed them, fitted them out with arms
and ammunition, and encouraged them to dispatch their war
parties on expeditions against the white settlements to the
eastward.
Especially from Fort Niagara, that old hawk’s nest at
the angle of lake and river, was this sort of warfare kept
up throughout the Revolution. From that base, not only
did the Indians take the warpath, but bands of white men,
some of them of culture and Christian training, joined with
the naked and painted savage in these wild marches through
the wilderness, to fall upon the defenseless frontiersman, to
burn his cabin, ruin his crops, steal his cattle, shoot or scalp
the aged or helpless, and take captive the young of both
sexes, bringing them back over hundreds of miles of forest
paths to old Fort Niagara. Some of these expeditions were
responsible for the massacres of Bowman’s Creek, Cherry
Valley and Wyoming. They followed the valleys of the
Mohawk, the Susquehanna and the Allegheny, and they
gave to the Revolutionary war in the vicinity of Lake Erie
and the Niagara a character for cruelty elsewhere un-
equaled.
The Revolution closed with the Treaty of Paris, in 1783.
By the terms of that Treaty, the British posts on the Great
Lakes south of the agreed boundary line, were to be sur-
rendered to the Americans. But John Bull, you know, once
he has taken hold, has a reputation for holding on, bull-dog
fashion. For thirteen years, Great Britain continued to
retain these Lake posts, which, although American by treatyTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.	153
from 1783, did not become American by possession until
1796.
On an August day, in that year, the British colors came
down at Fort Niagara and the stars and stripes went to the
masthead, proclaiming a new sovereignty over these lands
and lakes.
There were then, you do not need to be reminded, no
towns of Niagara Falls or Buffalo, Dunkirk, Cleveland,
Toledo, Milwaukee or Chicago. Detroit and Mackinaw,
old French posts which had fallen into the hands of the
British, and had been British strongholds for 37 years,
immediately felt the influence of new life and settlement.
Nothing is more striking in the history of our home region,
than the quickening of new forces which made themselves
manifest as soon as the American Government had actual
control of the Lake posts. Then set in the era of great
speculative interests, of land companies. The Holland
Land Company acquired more than two million acres1 of
Western New York, and the tidie of immigration began, to
these shores. It was a steadily swelling tide which, in
a decade, brought into the counties bordering on Lake
Erie a pioneer population which was truly a selected
and a chosen people. No better stock ever settled new
lands. They brought energy, industry, no little material
wealth, and a great inheritance of moral standards and
character.
From the close of the Revolution there had been coming
into what is now the Province of Ontario a somewhat
similar immigration of the United Empire Loyalists. The
two communities, north and south of Lake Erie, east and
west of the Niagara, developed on practically the same lines,
were from the same stock and were alike in all things except
their political allegiance. Cordial relations prevailed.154
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
There was free exchange of business, families intermarried,
and there was coming into existence a condition of pros-
perity and good feeling which more nearly approached the
ideal state of peace than had ever before been known in the
Lake region.
Suddenly the development of the region was checked.
Friendly relations were broken off and war once more
blighted the settlements around Lake Erie.
This is no time to enter with any fullness into the narra-
tive of the war which Congress declared against Great
Britain on the 18th of June, 1812. You know how from
the outset the Lakes and the Niagara frontier in particular
became the theater of that war. You know how the for-
tunes of war varied. For the Americans, the year of 1812
hereabouts was a year of disaster. Our badly organized
and crude endeavor to invade Canada at Queenston Heights
not only resulted in our defeat, the capture of many of our
troops, and the death of Sir Isaac Brock, the most brilliant
military figure in Canadian history; but it revealed to the
country, by the cowardice and insubordination of the
militia, the necessity for better trained troops if the war
were to be carried on by land operations.
The story of the high seas was very different. It was
one of the surprises of history that our small navy could
render such splendid account of itself, in single contests
against the ships of Great Britain. There is no more inspir-
ing reading in all the history of our country than the story
of those wonderful sea duels at the opening of the War
of 1812.
The year 1813 on this frontier was largely a year of
preparation, and of offensive operations culminating in the
burning of Niagara, in retaliation for which the British
swept the American frontier from Lake Ontario to Buffalo,THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
155
wiping out every settlement and turning back the hands of
the clock by a decade.
The one gallant affair of the war on the Lakes was the
victory of Perry over the British fleet on the ioth of Sep-
tember, 1813. You will recall how the young naval officer,
aged but 28, was sent to Lake Erie, charged with the
heavy duty of constructing a fleet from the green growing
trees, manning it from whatever sources he could draw his
men and striking whatever blow the God of Battles gave
him power to strike against the enemy. You know how he
outfitted a part of his fleet on the Niagara just below Buf-
falo, how others of his ships were built in the bay at Erie.
You know the outcome of his engagement with Barclay.
Now, a hundred years after, these lakeside cities join, as
the States and Federal Government join in paying tribute
to his memory and in dedicating monuments and memorials
to keep alive the fame of his achievement.
Then comes 1814, with its heavy fighting in which the
Americans, now having in some degree learned the art of
war, better equipped and trained, met the British on more
nearly equal footing. You are familiar with the story of
Fort Erie and Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. They were
heavy battles for that time, with grievous loss of lives and
waste of money for both nations; and yet, so far as the
settlement of differences was concerned, or the advantage of
either contestant, they might just as well never have been
fought.
The War of 1812 presents many curious features. Among
its causes, you will recall, were conditions which had grown
out of British interference with American trade on the high
seas; the impressment of seamen, the blockading of ports,
the discrimination against Americans in trade with other
countries; these were some of the contributing causes
which goaded Congress to declare war.156
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
It is curious now, after the lapse of a full century, to
reflect that the greatest battle of that war—New Orleans—
was fought after the commissioners had signed a treaty of
peace, a treaty which did not mention directly or indirectly
the principal grievances over which we had gone to war.
It was a war fought by a feeble folk against the mightiest
military and naval power on earth; nor was it fought, on
the American side, by an undivided people. It was true,
throughout that whole period, that New England, which
represented the greatest wealth of the country, bitterly op-
posed the prosecution of the war. The New England press
and pulpit and the money interests gave to President Madi-
son as much trouble as did England herself.
It cost our poor country a hundred millions of dollars and
fifty thousand lives. From the outset, one cry had been the
conquest and annexation of Canada; but at the close of the
war, the boundary line remained as before, and the spirit
of loyalty to Great Britain in Canada had been immeasur-
ably strengthened.
With inadvertence I have used the phrase, annexation
of Canada. It is a curious phrase—a sounding name for
something which has never existed or been in the slightest
degree liable to come to pass. The phrase is scattered at
intervals throughout our history for a century and more.
The further back you go, the more you find of it. In fact,
if there ever was a time when there was any reason for
discussing the annexation of Canada it was in the days of
the Revolution, when the Thirteen Colonies were cutting
home ties and taking chances in the name of Liberty.
There may have been at that time in Canada some kindred
spirits willing to join the adventure. If so, their disposi-
tion was purely individual and never became colonial,or
of influence in Government control. In the readjustmentsTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
157
of those days, the United States became synonymous with
separation from England, Canada stood more and more
for loyal adherence to England. Still, through the decades,
the bugaboo of annexation recurs as insubstantial dreams
will recur. In the vision of so philosophical a scholar as
Goldwin Smith annexation loomed as the ultimate destiny
of Canada,—even while Canada was speeding, with con-
stantly accelerated progress, in the opposite direction.
Even in these days there now and then will rise at his desk
in the House of Representatives at Washington, some states-
man who with singular earnestness if not sincerity ardently
advocates the annexation of Canada. I never hear of this
performance without wishing that I could transport such an
honorable gentleman to Canada, if but for a day; could
take him, shall we say, into some country school-house
where some slip of a Canadian girl (I believe the young
women teach country schools in Canada, as with us?) is
teaching the boys and girls of her district the first lessons
in loving service for one’s own country, which is patriotism;
all very simply and largely unconsciously, no doubt; but
there’s a print of the King on the wall, or at any rate the
Union Jack somewhere in sight. Now if our visitor from
Washington had the good gift of Vision, and could get a
flash of what the loyal education of each new generation
means in Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific—well, he
would go back to his place in the House of Representatives,
if not a wiser, let us hope at least a quieter man on the
subject of Canadian annexation. Perhaps he would recall
Kipling’s lines, the truest epitome of Canadian spirit I
know of:
Daughter am I in my Mother’s house, but mistress in my own.
This will have seemed in the nature of a digression, but
still my theme is Peace. The Treaty of Ghent, or rather158
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
an agreement that grew out of it, established on the Lakes
the principle of non-armament. A Government patrol to
prevent smuggling and illegal fishing is all that is required
either of the United States or Canada and is all that sug-
gests armed service on these waters.
In the century that has passed since that Treaty was
signed, there have been many issues which might have
driven hotter-headed peoples to arms.
For long years there were boundary disputes. Our
Canadian friends to this day cannot understand how their
commissioners ever agreed to a boundary line which gave
us the northernmost part of New England. Then, there
was the difficult time which brought forth the cry of “Fifty-
four Forty or Fight.” How easily it might have been
“fight” you have but to read the history of that exciting
period to discover. Many of you will recall the bitterness
aroused in more recent years over the adjustment of the
Alaskan boundary.
Here on Lake Erie, in ’37 and ’38, what with the esca-
pades of William Lyon Mackenzie, the burning of the
steamer Caroline, and other incidents of the Upper Canada
Rebellion, the so-called Patriot War, there were causes
enough for international strife had they not been averted
by the justice and discretion and forbearance of Lord Ash-
burton and Daniel Webster.
And then the Civil War. Perhaps we came nearer to
an armed clash with Great Britain over the disputed Ala-
bama claims than at any time since 1812. Their ultimate
peaceful settlement was largely a triumph of the statesman-
ship of Gladstone. On these Lakes the Civil War period
was marked with numerous episodes, notably the Johnson’s
Island plot, the exploits of certain Confederate raiders and
the abortive Peace Convention at Niagara Falls, in whichTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
159
Horace Greeley undertook to show President Lincoln how
the war should be stopped. These and other episodes of the
time stirred up bitterness on either side the lake, but the
salutary influence of this Treaty of 1814 and the inherent
good sense of Canadians and Americans alike, carried us
along to an era of better understanding and better feeling.
Then there were the Fenian raids into Canada, a sort of
comic opera war it seems now, yet nations have sent armies
against each other for less cause than this. You will recall
the Behring Sea issue and the controversy over the Atlantic
fisheries. These and other matters that have arisen from
time to time have, in recent years, been submitted to the
tribunal of arbitrament and have been settled without burden-
some cost to either country, with dignity and with justice.
It is necessary, however, not to be led astray in our
exultation over the achievements of peace. We write and
talk of the fulfilment of a century of peace between Great
Britain and t'he United States. To the conscientious student
of history, there appears the necessity of qualifying clauses.
I lately saw, in a semi-official publication of the State, an
allusion to the past century as one of “peace and amity”
between the United States and Great Britain. Of peace,
yes, in the sense of diplomatic tolerance, and no resort to
arms. Great Britain has not shot down the soldiers of this
country, nor have we killed British troops for an hundred
years. If to refrain from such acts is international peace,
then a century of peace is well-nigh accomplished. But
what about amity, using the word in its plain, straightfor-
ward English sense? We promote neither peace nor amity
by assuming that they have existed when they did not.
What is the truth, as to our relations with Great Britain
—or for this instance I shall be more precise if I say Eng-
land—during the past century?160
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
1 suggest, as a subject not unworthy your attention at
some future meeting, a review of this so-called century of
peace, in the light of facts. We may term it a study of the
evolution of cordiality, between Great Britain and the
United States.
By what steps the present cordiality has been attained,
every student of our history must know. While I cannot
now enter into it in any adequate way, a very few minutes
will suffice to indicate the nature of the subject.
The relations of these two countries which are so fondly
at peace are, obviously, official and unofficial.
The official communications of the Government of Great
Britain to the Government of this country, in the early
years of our existence, were couched in terms which might
have been employed towards turbulent or perverse tribes
of Africa. From the day we declared our independence
down to and after the War of 1812, Great Britain’s neces-
sary communications with our Department of State are
marked by a dictatorial and superior tone, while the form
of expression is often far removed from what today we
term diplomatic. There was not only in the English mind,
a sense of superiority but there was an insistence of it,
naturally humiliating and irritating to Americans charged
with diplomatic intercourse. Indeed, it was not until well
within the past century—that is, in decades subsequent to
the War of 1812—that Great Britain adopted what is known
as “proper” diplomatic language in her communications to
Washington—the language of deference and courtesy which
is no w the vade me cum of diplomacy between the Pow ers of
the earth.
If this was the official expression of English dislike and
superiority it will readily be credited that the unofficial
expression in literature, in the press, and in the mouths andTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
161
thoughts of the contemptuous public, found varied and
offensive utterance for many years. Usually, prejudice is
based on lack of knowledge ; yet so many Englishmen and
women visited America to write disparagingly of it prior to
the Civil War that it was more than once questioned if there
were not some official backing and sanction to what ap-
peared a deliberate plan to give to the United States as bad
a character as possible, to advertise us unhappily to the
world and to posterity. Some of our most relentless tra-
du.cers, like Southey and Sidney Smith, did not take the
trouble to visit America, but were satisfied to misrepresent
without knowing anything about us. Travelers like Captain
Basil Hall, Mrs. Trollope, and a score of others in caustic
chapters magnified our faults and shortcomings. Charles
Dickens repaid the most hospitable (and profitable) recep-
tion that America could offer him, with books calculated to
make us the laughing-stock of the civilized world. Volumes
of this sort, falling year after year from the British press,
could not fail of some measure of effect in creating preju-
dice against the young Republic. The American public
of those days, more vulnerable and more sensitive than it
now is, settled down into undenied and undisguised dislike,
not to say hatred, of Great Britain and her institutions.
Several generations of American youth, learning from none-
too-competent or judicious school-books the story of the-
Revolution and the War of 1812, grew up with the deep-
rooted impression that England had been a merciless op-
pressor in the one instance and supercilious ignorer of our
rights in the other instance. Not infrequently men thus
reared came into public life, and did their misguided best
to keep alive all the prejudices, the misunderstandings and
the bitterness of spirit which they had inherited and im
which they had been schooled.162
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
I am tempted to speak of the American abroad, but that
would be another digression, at least from the paths of
peace. My observation has been, that always, in England,
there is very much in evidence a sort of American whom we
really do not care for in America; the loud, uninformed
bragger of American superiority. Lack of information can
be condoned; but bragging, never. It does not go with
true patriotic spirit, but it does go very far to create in
English society, especially among the middle class, in the
press and the average English mind a distaste for Ameri-
cans, for America and everything associated with the name.
All of this is not amity.
I need not remind you that there are exceptions; that
breadth of view and tolerance, culture and courtesy, are
qualities confined to neither side of the Atlantic; with
increased intercourse these fine qualities spread. We are
all the time getting further away from the sources of the
trouble; and I venture to think that as the past century has
been one of peace, a hundred years hence our successors
may look back over a century of amity.
Many ways of celebrating the centenary are being con-
sidered. It is agreed that, throughout the English-speaking
countries and at Ghent, on Christmas Eve, 1914, special
religious services will be held.1 Wherever Anglo-Saxon
peoples dwell, from London to New Zealand, from Aus-
tralia and India to Canada, throughout the length and
breadth of America, some special observances will be held
in cathedrals and churches, in schools and assemblies of
every sort, with speech and sermon, with song and prayer,
in commemoration of this fully rounded century of peace
1. Written., of course, without prevision of the Great War, as were other
remarks following, but which may be allowed to stand, to complete the
writer’s presentation of the suDject as viewed in the spring of 1914.THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.	163
between the English speaking peoples. The poet of the past
has sung of Britain’s
Far-flung battle line.
The poet of the future—yes, the poet of today, may sing of
the girdle of peace and good-will which in this centenary
observance, Great Britain and her kindred have put around
the globe.
In the great banquet hall of the old Hotel de Ville, in
Ghent, a formal banquet will be held in celebration of the
signing of the Treaty. It is proposed by the Belgians to
restore this historic hall to the exact conditions of a hun-
dred years ago.
Of closer interest to us, are the projects for building one
or more memorial bridges across the Niagara. Just now,
there is no agreement as to location. Buffalo and Niagara
Falls are rival claimants for the honor. Probably a peace-
ful solution will be found and ultimately a memorial erected
worthy of the two nations. Are you aware that the cataract
of Niagara has itself been consecrated, with the solemn rites
of the Roman Catholic Church, to the Blessed Virgin of
Peace?1
One interesting achievement in this connection is the
purchase of Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, Eng-
land, the ancestral home of George Washington. If a suit-
able endowment fund can be secured, it is proposed to main-
tain this historic old house as a museum for things relating
to the two countries and as an international meeting place.
Still another suggestion is that the women of America shall
erect at Washington a statue of Queen Victoria; while a
bust or statue of George Washington is to be placed in
Westminster Abbey.
i. See ante, pp. 97-112.164
THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
The lakeside cities, Oswego, Kingston and Toronto, and
all the larger communities from Buffalo west as far as
Chicago and Duluth, are expected to arrange special pro-
grams or to* provide for the erection of permanent memo-
rials. The school departments of several States are already
planning special courses of reading, special celebrations to
be carried out by the children.
Still another class of memorial is contemplated. One
proposition is to establish an interchange of professorships
in the leading colleges of Great Britain and the United
States, to be maintained during years to come. A system
of international prizes for schools throughout both coun-
tries to be awarded for work dealing with the peace subject
is another suggestion.
Perhaps greatest of all in its far-reaching effect, is the
proposal to endow traveling scholarships for journalists,
that is to provide a fund, by the aid of which writers on the
leading newspapers of the two countries will be enabled
each to visit the other’s country, to study its institutions and
acquaint himself with the other man’s point of view on
international topics. This and some of the other suggested
forms of commemoration perhaps wait only for the word
from some multimillionaire who would be willing to provide
the endowment.
You and I, my friends, will never see the Millennium
which dreamers have told of. We will never see a time
when there is not strife between nations as between men.
We will probably never see a time of complete disarma-
ment, even on the part of the most enlightened and peace-
loving peoples. There are active forces in every community
which for the public good, must be controlled by force.
Army and Navy represent organized force, not merely for
offensive action against other nations, but for protection ofTHE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
165
a country’s own people—protection against themselves.
How long would life or property in New York or London
be safe, if there were no police? A navy, a standing army
or a ready trained militia is a nation’s police force, and no
nation has yet got beyond the need of it.
We shall never see a time when there is not strife; but
already we are come to a time when more and more the
preferences of thoughtful men in this country, are for
peace. It may be so in some others; for me at least it
would be rash to presume to know their national point of
view. I do not dwell on the evolution of humanitarianism;
but as I contemplate the close relations of the business com-
munities, the whole world around, it appears to me that
more and more the preferences of thoughtful men are for
peace.
More and more there spreads over the world the New
Internationalism. The nations, or representative organiza-
tions among them, more and more work together for the
common good. The Postal Union, the Red Cross organiza-
tion, international submarine and wireless telegraph service,
agreements governing steamer tracks on the high seas, inter-
national cooperation among medical and other scientific,
philanthropic and sociological bodies—these are a few of
the cooperative forces, economical to administer, advan-
tageous to all, which tend to draw the nations of the earth
together. Even so simple and accepted a matter. as the
prediction of tomorrow’s weather is largely dependent for
its accuracy and efficiency on international cooperation.
When we consider these things, we see more clearly than
did the earlier generations, the grievous cost and exhaustion
of war. No age has ever protested so much against war,
as ours. That of itself is a sign of mankind’s slow evolu-166	THE CENTENARY OF PEACE.
tion to a time when the earth shall realize the poetic
prophecy of England’s great lyrist:
When the war-drums are muffled
And the battle-flags are furled
In the Parliament of Man,
The Federation of the World.
The Peace Centenary on which we are entering will be
a great milestone in the world’s approach to that better time.
Nowhere in the world should it mean more than to us,
dwellers by the Great Lakes. If our past has been rich in
experience and fruitful in spite of strife, our present is
richer yet in opportunity under the benign hand of Peace.