Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/130

 when it was learned that his impassioned appeal to patriotism figuratively swept senators "off their feet."

History students can have no quarrel with the motive assigned by Senator Cashman for the passage of this law. He says: "The history of a nation is its proudest asset. It includes the record of its great men, their ideals, sacrifices, and achievements. To preserve that history in all its original purity and teach it to the rising generations is a nation's first duty." With every word in that stirring exordium the historically minded man or woman will cordially agree. Thoughtful persons, whether historians or not, will also sympathize with Senator Cashman when he undertakes to rebuke anything approaching levity in characterizing the fathers of the Republic or captiousness in criticizing their policies, motives, and achievements. Unfortunately, there always have been among writers some who display a certain air of "smartness" or superciliousness which hardly comports with the inherent dignity of the historian's office, or with the aim of doing equal and exact justice to all persons and to all causes discussed. Yet it will probably be no light task to convince an impartial umpire that writers of textbooks which have been adopted for use in the schools, after careful scrutiny by boards of education and other school officers responsible to the people, have been guilty of "treason to the nation," as Senator Cashman seems to think has often been the case. The framers of the constitution, with wise prevision, limited the application of the word "treason" in such a way as to exclude that indefinite class of crimes known elsewhere under the name of constructive treason, which in England and other countries had provided a favorable soil for plotters of revenge against individuals and in times of high tension always yielded a sinister harvest of oppression and suffering. So they defined treason against the