"We have decided to become a 100 percent American book critic"

“We have decided to become a 100 percent American book critic during the coming year.

We shall cry down every work which shows any novelty or freshness of viewpoint or style, and cry up all the old, second-rate pussy-footers. We shall object to to every book which might be interpreted as not strictly moral, according to the creeds of the Clean Book League and other worthy organizations of the determinedly tender-minded. . . . We shall consider it an insult to our flag when any teacher or purveyor of history intimates that any of our national heroes was not as immaculate in personality as the Rev. John Roach Stratton, that Washington ever ate a cherry, that Grant was ever overheard to go as far as saying ‘Darn!’, that Lincoln’s anecdotes could not have been repeated before any gathering of old maids, or that Dewey was not outnumbered six to one at the Battle of Manila. We shall refuse, with Bryan, to believe that the world is more than 6,000 years old, or that our ancestors were any but Hebrews. We shall insist that the civilization and literature of these States are the greatest, the most perfect creations within the memory of man, and if foreigners don’t like them they can go back where they came from. Above all we shall maintain assiduously that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, that behind the clouds is the blue, and that Eddie Guest is the apotheosis of culture.”

. . . . “Boost, not knock (except the work of all these here literary Bolsheviks who are trying to start something new) shall be our motto.”

--John V.A. Weaver, “Personally Conducted,” Brooklyn Eagle, January 5, 1924, p.3