Part 18

When Physicians, Boards of Health and Hospital Superintendents annually prepare for the reception and treatment of hundreds, or rather thousands, who will—before the close of the day—be brought in torn, burned, blinded; when undertakers prepare for the hideous aftermath of our National Birthday; when hundreds of thousands of the sick look forward with dread to the recurrence of this season of noise, which to them brings so much distress; when fathers and mothers all over the country shudder at the thought of what the Fourth may bring to their dear ones, I believe that one is justified in characterizing as a national disgrace that pseudo-patriotism which is responsible for so much agony.

It is impossible to exaggerate the stigma of shame incurred by the intelligent, adult proportion of the population in deliberately and scientifically preparing for the massacre and maiming of the youthful, ignorant and heedless members of the community. One city, for instance, added twenty-six surgeons to its ambulance corps, while another engaged twelve distributors of tetanus antitoxin, had field dressing stations prepared by its National Volunteer Emergency Service and sent around fifteen hundred vials of antitoxin serum to its hospitals. And thus many cities anticipated the return of their Day of Carnage, preparing to bind wounds and lacking the courage required to insist on the passage of drastic prohibitive ordinances which would have rendered impossible the shedding of blood.

I am sure that the thanks of all are due to one of our medical publications which, for years past, has compiled statistics upon statistics, based upon the price that we pay for our present-day mad celebration of the Fourth, for without the splendid work of the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ we should be unable to estimate the cost of our annual holiday. As for the figures, so laboriously compiled, they are simply amazing. To think of fifteen hundred and thirty-one deaths and thirty-three thousand and seventy-three accidents, the fearful sacrifice voluntarily offered by us, within the last seven years, to our false ideals! And yet these tables, shocking as they are, give so inadequate an idea of the suffering involved! For of these fifteen hundred and thirty-one deaths, practically none came painlessly, almost all being accompanied by the convulsions of tetanus, the torments of fire, or the shock of injuries which changed healthy, happy children into shapeless, agonizing horrors. While as for the thirty-three thousand and seventy-three who were injured, but not fatally, how many are dragging out their wretched lives, blind, maimed or crippled!

What, perhaps, is the saddest feature, is the fact that almost all the victims of the Fourth are children, whose youth and ignorance and inexperience and helplessness would certainly seem to merit all due protection at our hands. Poor little ones, who play delightedly with danger! And then how many among the victims of the Fourth are those who have not been “celebrating,” but who have been shot down or burnt to death by the wanton recklessness of Independence Day “Patriots” (God save the mark!). Bullets, cannon-crackers, blank cartridges, and strings of Chinese crackers spare none. Little babes have had their heads torn open, mothers have been killed as they sat beside their children, scores of girls have been burnt to death by having lighted firecrackers or fireworks thrown in their direction. Runaways have been frequent because hoodlums love to throw great “bombs” under frightened teams, and one of the merriest sports has been to place large torpedoes on car-tracks. In Vincennes (Indiana), for instance, one Fourth was “celebrated” by placing boxes of explosives on the tracks, by means of which car windows were shattered, passengers terrified and injured, and traffic blocked for hours; after these boxes had all been picked up it was found that two barrels of explosives had been collected. In Boston, only two years ago, seventy arrests were made for using firearms, while in Pittsburg a party of rich, young hoodlums terrorized the holiday crowds by dashing along in an automobile, firing volleys of shots up and down the streets and into the shops. Pittsburg’s arrests July 4, 1907, numbered 300. But, then, what can we expect when we repeal for a period of twenty-four hours almost all laws regarding safety and sanity?

As for the licensed recklessness, responsible for so many accidents, the recital of some of the mad acts to which it has led in the past is simply incredible. Some of these acts were: the throwing of dynamite bombs and giant crackers and the firing of revolvers into holiday crowds, the tossing of lighted firecrackers into the laps, or against the thin clothing, of women and girls, resulting in their being roasted to death; the filling of pipes and tin cans with dynamite, or the stuffing of bottles with lighted firecrackers—all with inevitable consequences. These are but a few of the acts which caused these 33,073 accidents, but the excuse for all was always the same—Patriotism! If this, however, is Patriotism, then it recalls—with but a slight variation as to meaning—that utterance of Dr. Johnson’s: “Patriotism which is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” However, it is not Patriotism, but only craving for noise and excitement and danger which kills and blinds and maims on our Day of Carnage. Some, indeed, go so far as to declare that the usual celebration of the Fourth is “due to desire to break loose into a day of savagery and wallow in the unusual.” Perhaps, if a stop is not soon put to this mad orgy, we shall find ourselves changing the words of our National Anthem, as suggested by one of our dailies, and singing:

“My country, ’Tis of Thee, For Thou hast Crippled Me.”

However, it is not Patriotism but Hoodlumism and the desire to revel in a day from which all sane and safe restrictions have been removed, which may be said to guide most of the celebrants on the Fourth, for most of them are undoubtedly ignorant of its glorious significance. That this is true was amusingly shown in one of our large eastern cities where between thirty and forty thousand children were asked in the public schools why they celebrated the Fourth of July. The favorite answer was said to have been “For shoots,” others were: “For a band,” “For chicken to eat,” and most astounding of all “For the King of the Jews” (the similarity of sound between Jew and July doubtless suggesting the last).

The duration of our “noise-fest” varies in different localities, in some being limited to a few hours, in others being permitted to extend over several weeks. Where this premature celebration is allowed, it naturally entails great suffering on the sick, not to speak of the additional danger incurred by the youthful participants. It is this early start which, doubtless, prompted the remark: “The Fourth of July is the only holiday which begins before it happens.” As for the celebration proper, it generally starts on the evening of the third and lasts until the morning or the afternoon of the fifth. In some cities, however, it does not begin until midnight, in others not until four o’clock in the morning. However, even where the noisy period is the shortest, the suffering borne by our hospital patients is sufficient to excite the sympathy of all those with whom they come in contact.

Regarding the monetary cost of our celebration, New York City is reported to have spent about $14,000,000 on the celebration of two holidays, with a resultant loss of 11 persons killed and 768 injured. As for the total monetary loss to the whole country, it can scarcely be calculated, nor can the fire-loss be estimated. Regarding the latter, however, I have been enabled, through the courtesy of Mr. Miller, General Agent of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, to obtain a few figures which show that during five years (from 1898 to 1902 inclusive) there were 4,827 fires in the United States due to fireworks; in Massachusetts from 1902 to 1906 inclusive there were 278 fires due to the same cause; and in Boston in one year, 1906, 72 took place. But quite apart from the effect of these conflagrations on our fire-loss (which is about nine times as high as that of the chief countries of Europe—$3 per capita as against 33 cents), many accidents might perhaps be traced to carelessness engendered in the young by the annually repeated spectacle of a whole community playing with fire and explosives. I firmly believe that this one day of dangerous license exerts a pernicious effect upon the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.

An example of what an enthusiastically patriotic and yet sane and safe holiday observance can be, was given last May, when England and her colonies celebrated “Empire Day.” This fête was observed by tens of millions, scattered over one-fourth of the world’s surface, and yet not one death was reported—not a single accident marred the glory and the happiness of the day. In this splendid world-pageant, the citizens of to-morrow were the chief actors, and it is estimated that fully eight millions took part. Children in long procession, thousands of them in uniform, wearing flags on their breasts and carrying them aloft in an endless blaze of color, marched along to render homage to the Union Jack, which fluttered out above their heads as the little soldiers were reviewed, or as they sang the National Anthem. The floral emblem of the day was the daisy or, failing that, the bachelor’s button, marigold or marguerite—the watchwords were “Responsibility, duty, sympathy, self-sacrifice.” In addition to the National Anthem, Rudyard Kipling’s “Children’s Song” was also sung by millions of little ones:

“Lord of our birth, our faith, our pride, For whose dear sake our Fathers died, O, Motherland, we pledge to thee Head, heart and hand through years to be.”

As for France, everybody knows how joyfully it enters upon the celebration of its Day of Liberation, July 14th. Military reviews, artistically beautiful street decoration, free theatrical and operatic performances, music, splendid displays of fireworks from the bridges, and public dancing in the streets and squares, make up a day of happy and sane observance—a huge kermess. Perhaps no other country celebrates its birthday with quite the same stern simplicity, the same touching faith as Switzerland, when on August 1st, no outward manifestation of the national thanksgiving is remarked, except in the ringing of bells and the blazing of bonfires on the mountain peaks, or in the singing of a few inspiring songs. The whole nation seems to be listening to the voices of the past, while continuing its daily tasks, this sturdy band of mountaineers! And thus with the celebrations of yet more European countries, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and still others, everything is marked by sanity and order, and yet by true thanksgiving and joy.

But although the American abroad may well blush with shame in comparing our “Horrible Fourth,” our “Tetanus Day,” our “Annual Massacre,” our “Modern Massacre of Innocents,” our “Carnival of Lockjaw,” our “Bloody Fourth,” or our “Day of Carnage,” with the fête days of other lands, let him take courage, for at last it really seems as if “Explosive Patriotism” were “on the run.” Throughout the Union, scores of cities have already passed or are considering the passage of restrictive or, better still, of prohibitive ordinances, and countless organizations are getting into line in their efforts to substitute attractive features, such as children’s processions and merry-making, pageantry, musical festivals, picnics, and other safe observances for our present orgy of death. In order to show at a glance what has already been gained by legislation in preventing Fourth of July accidents, let us place side by side the results obtained a few months ago in two groups of cities. In the first let us put Washington, Cleveland, Baltimore and Toledo, which cities protected by prohibitive or restrictive ordinances, gave last Fourth of July a total of twelve accidents. The other four, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis, which were all relatively unprotected, gave a total of thirteen hundred and ninety-seven accidents, or an average of almost three hundred and fifty apiece. Drastic ordinances and stern enforcement are required if we are ever to down our National Disgrace.

Let us protect our little ones from death and danger, and then the next step will be to learn to express “social ideals in action,” for as Mr. Luther Gulick so well says: “If there is any one thing, any one occasion, in connection with which there should be national community expression, it should be in connection with our celebration of American independence. This constitutes not only the pivotal point in the history of American institutions, but is the pivotal idea upon which democracy rests.”

Nothing is more inspiring than love of country, therefore let us advocate a “religion of patriotism” and do away with a false death-dealing patriotism which, annually, on our National Birthday disgraces us in the eyes of the whole civilized world.

AMERICANIZING THE FOURTH

(A Suggestion for a Pageant of Liberty.)

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

The old, undemocratic idea of honoring the birthday of American independence is embodied in annual explosions of barbarism which have already done to death many more persons than the Revolutionary War destroyed. Indeed, our peaceful celebration seems as much more dangerous than the old style of warfare as small-pox is more dangerous than chicken-pox.

Our new festival in honor of Liberty is—or is soon to be—very different. Instead of a day of pseudo-patriotism,—a Moloch-day sacred to blinding and maiming our little ones, to shredding and roasting them alive, blowing them to bits or allowing them to struggle to their death in the horrible clutch of tetanus—there is proposed a day of the deepest, fairest, most enthusiastic, most genuine patriotism; a day of emphasis not upon erratic individualism but upon national solidarity; a day of fun yet of education and inspiration to old as well as young and to all the nations that are now being fused in our gigantic melting pot. In a word, the new movement aims, as it should, to make the Fourth our most profoundly _American_ holiday.

The recent rise of the Independence Day pageant is a by-product of two wide twentieth century movements: the new classicism and the new democracy. The new classicism is behind the current tendency of certain of the arts to react from the rich, vague elaboration of an exaggerated romanticism toward plain, clearly organized simplicity. In a word, it is trying to restore a normal balance between the emotional and the intellectual elements in art. In music this movement is led by Max Reger, the modern Bach; in architecture it is felt in the _Art Nouveau_ and, in America, in such significant buildings as the New York Library and the Pennsylvania Terminal; in literature in the recent rebirth of the drama, of which the pageant is a near relative. For the pageant has been defined as “a dramatic presentation of the history of a community or of the development of a phase of civilization, given by the people themselves.”

The movement called the new democracy is slightly older. Under President Roosevelt this country discovered a new and more vital meaning in the old term “democracy.” And it has not taken us long to find out that on Independence Day the square deal is less thrillingly symbolized by the maiming and slaughter of innocent thousands through the meaningless cracker and pistol than by the coöperation of all nationalities and social grades on our shores in great, concerted movements, large with the meaning of the past, the present and the future America, and glowing with the local colors of the many peoples that have made and are to make this nation.

The inevitable medium for such expression is the pageant. And though this form of celebration is still in its early infancy and has not yet attained even the modest measure of clarity already reached in other arts by the new classicism, nor even the puny measure of real democracy exhibited to-day by our “square deal” renaissance, yet it is quite as big with promise as they.

The Pageant of Liberty, which is here proposed, is based on the idea that America was the pioneer in that modern struggle for liberty which has played such a striking part in the world’s history since 1776. Our War of Independence inspired the French Revolution which, in turn, brandished the torch of liberty through Europe during the nineteenth century until, in our day, the flame has spread to other continents.

This Pageant consists of a parade of simple floats which may or may not end in a dramatic and choral performance or “masque” in some athletic field or fair ground or stadium. The floats and their costumed characters are to be the actors in this masque.

These floats need not be elaborate or expensive or hard to construct. In most cases all that is required is a plain large truck, festooned with simple garlands, and with the wheels hidden in oak branches. This truck carries the necessary characters, dressed, of course, in the costume of the period.

There need be none of those complicated, elaborately colored, pyramidal structures of “staff” which endangered the success of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York City. For they are difficult and costly to prepare and doubtful of effect. The effect sought should be pictorial rather than sculpturesque. In many cases a single small platform or table is the only “property” required.

The floats in procession represent the history of the modern struggle for liberty. This history, however, may be depicted as fully or as sketchily as the particular resources of each place suggest, each foreign colony in a town working up its own float under central supervision.

In our day most American cities and towns have a large percentage of the foreign born. Let us suppose, for example, that a certain large town consists of the following nine nationalities: Americans, French, Irish, Servians, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, and Persians. In that case its particular pageant would consist of at least ten floats, each attended on foot or horseback by its appropriate escort of the same race, preferably in national costume, and by bands of music playing—perhaps on native instruments—those national airs most nearly identified with the particular historical event set forth.

I. THE AMERICAN float will naturally head the procession, for precedence in this pageant is fixed by the historical order in which the various struggles for liberty occurred.

The American float might represent the Fathers sitting about a table and signing the Declaration of Independence, with the Liberty Bell hanging aloft. Or it might be boat-shaped, with Washington in the bow, crossing the Delaware and tattered soldiers straining at the oars or poling away at imaginary ice-cakes.

The other floats would follow in this order:

II. FRANCE. King Louis XVI is forced to recognize General Lafayette, the commander of the new National Guard, on July 17, 1789, and affixes to his own royal garments the tricolor cockade of red, blue and white, the symbol of liberty. This event occurred three days after the storming of the Bastille, a subject that would not lend itself well to pictorial treatment.

III. IRELAND. Some incident from the Rebellion of 1798. The float might be in honor of the patriotic Society of United Irishmen and of their founder, Theobald Wolfe Tone. Or it might represent the dramatic betrayal, on May 19, 1798, of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the promised leader of the revolt.

IV. SERVIA. Some incident from the splendid rebellion of 1804 when the Serbs, who had been galled by the Ottoman yoke for more than four centuries, rose and drove the Turkish _dahis_ out of Servia. Their two leaders were Black George and Milosch who have been called respectively the Achilles and the Ulysses of Servian history. The float might give the crucial moment in the decisive battle of Schabaz, with Black George leading his men against those picturesque standard-bearers of the Turkish army, the bravest Begs of Bosnia.

V. GERMANY. It is not so easy to find a moment in the German struggle which is both significant and simple enough for our purpose. Perhaps the “Wartburg Festival” would answer. Some historians treat this incident in lighter vein, others seriously. But all agree that the government reactionaries took it very much to heart and at once began a reign of tyranny that was largely responsible for the revolutions of ’30 and of historic ’48. At any rate the Festival would make a most effective float. This was the way it happened.

A couple of years after the battle of Waterloo secret political societies were formed all over Germany among the students and the athletes. These were called the _Burschenschaften_ and the Turners. On October 17, 1818, several hundred of these young fellows met at the Wartburg (the ancient castle which had sheltered Luther after he had defied the pope and the emperor). That evening they gathered about a bonfire and fed it with various symbols of despotism and with the effigies of reactionary books, while, hard by, the Turners did exuberant gymnastic “stunts.” This float could be made most realistic with a genuine bonfire and a couple of Turners in the rear performing, perhaps, on a horizontal bar. The decorations should be in black, red and yellow, the colors of German liberty.

VI. GREECE. The float might merely show a group of the picturesquely costumed leaders of the Revolution of 1821. There would be General Kolokotrones, Marco Botzaris (the Suliote chieftain immortalized in Fitz-Greene Halleck’s poem), Admiral Miaoulis, Kanaris of fire-ship fame, Karaiskakis, the daring guerilla, and Lord Byron, the poet of revolt, who gave his life for the cause, and without whom there might have been no Greek independence.

A more dramatic subject would be found in the Greeks’ welcome of Byron when he arrived at Missolonghi in the fall of 1823. The costumes of this float would be particularly effective.

VII. HUNGARY. One turns naturally to the events of April 14, 1849, when, on Kossuth’s motion, the diet proclaimed the independence of Hungary. This ought to be as practicable as to give the signing of our own Declaration.

As an alternative scheme, General Görgei could be shown, surrounded by the evidences of some of his victories, such as Szólnok, Isaszeg, Vácz, and Nagysarló.

VIII. ITALY. Italian liberty might well be epitomized in the spectacle of a red-shirted Garibaldi leaning from the balcony of the Foresteria (the balcony could be made out of two packing boxes and a bit of railing) and addressing the jubilant Neapolitans on Sept. 7, 1860, at the close of his conquest of the Two Sicilies.

IX. PERSIA. This unique float would show a handful of the Mujteheds, or higher Mohammedan priests, taking refuge, or “bast” before the shrine of Shah Abdul Azim near Teheran, as they did in 1905. The taking of “bast” in some sanctuary or other place of protection is an old Persian method of political protest. In this case it inaugurated the recent revolution which won Persia a constitution.

X. LIBERTY. The final float would be devoted to displaying the charms of the most statuesquely beautiful young woman in the community,—who would be dressed and accoutered rather like the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, only, one hopes, with somewhat better taste.

In this order the procession would parade the principal streets. Then, finally it would march to the stadium (or athletic field) for the dramatic part of the pageant, if this part were found desirable.

But before passing to the masque, a few more suggestions must be offered about the parade.