I9I2.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 75 



mistakes, atrocities, if yon please, are far more useful to know about 

 than the pretense that there were none. The real patriots who hated 

 colonialism and alien rule in any form and who were determined to 

 break from the empire no matter how well it governed them, are 

 more worthy of admiration than those supposed " affectionate colo- 

 nists," who, we are assured, if they had been a little more coddled by 

 England, would have kept America in the empire to this day. 



There has recently been some discussion in the newspapers on 

 the hopelessness of all efforts to make good plays or even good novels 

 out of the scenes of our struggle for independence. Why should 

 our Revolution, it is asked, be so totally barren in dramatic incident 

 and dramatic use and some other revolutions so rich in that use. 

 May it not be because our Revolution has been so steadily and per- 

 sistently written away from the actual occurrences, that novelists and 

 play writers when they search for material find a scholastic, academic 

 revolution that never happened and that is barren of all the traits 

 of human nature. 



