LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., LTD. 1926 No 497 The Declaration of Independ- Prof. W. ALISON PHILLIPS ence The Author of the "Elegy" Coinage and War Debts in the Pioneeer Days in China Industry, Politics and Public The Edinburgh Review JULY, 1926 No. 497 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 1. Independence Day. By PHILIP GUEDALLA. John Murray, 1926. 2. History of the American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century. By HENRY L. OSGOOD. 4 Vols. Columbia University Press. 1924 4. 3. British Colonial Policy. By G. L. BEER. Macmillan Company.. 1922. The American Revolution. By H. E. EGERTON. Clarendon Press.. 7923. 5. Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson. By FRANCIS W. HIRST. Macmillans. 1926. MR. R. Philip Guedalla, with timely courage, prefaces his collection of studies of the willing and unwilling begetters of American independence with a short treatise on truth. Patriotism and centenaries, he justly observes, are the two greatest enemies of truth, and giving this general statement a particular application, he suggests that some unborn Frazer should pursue a Golden Bough" through the dark forests of Thanksgiving Day oratory and Anglo-American school text-books. Legends enough would certainly reward the quest. But a collection of them would be sorry reading, for they lack the high quality of imagination which gives colour and variety to the fancies of primitive peoples. The gist of them all, indeed, is contained in a single sentence by an American writer, whose fervent patriotism, though it does not exclude a most kindly feeling towards a chastened England, obscures his view of history. "Never can the written or spoken vord," writes Mr. Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg, " do adequate jstice to the brave colonials who dared unequal combat with the most powerful monarch of his time and who, in a sublimity of faith, courage, vision and devotion, wrested our institutions of freedom from the greed and tyranny of the Dark Ages."* *The Trail of a Tradition." (New York, 1926.) P. 42. |