E EIGHT TH lE MiCHIGAN DAILY It Was The Cause Of America That Made Me An Author' Paine Was True Revolutionary, Neither Red Nor D.A.R. Patriot By PROF. VERNER W. CRANE journalist of the American Revolu- The two-hundredth anmversary of! tion. He had written one pamphlet. Thomas Paine, Freedom Propagandist Hesiketh Pearson's Biography Shows Paine A Human Being Thomas Paine's birth serves to link another great age of revolution with our own. Tom Paine was the nearest thing to a professional revolutionist that the eighteenth century produced. In America perhaps Sam Adams should share the title. But Adams remained a ,Bostonian provincial. Paine pur- sued his vision of the "international republic" from America to Europe, from one revolution to the other. After American independence he re- turned to his native England. His Rights of Man was a challenge to Burke's counter-revolution, and at the same time an attack on Federal- ist "counter-revolutionaries" in America. Then came his French phase: membership in the Conven- tion, the labors on the Constitution, the whole pathetic attempt to plant the seed of American republicanism in soil plowed too deep by the French Revolution. Franklin said, "Where liberty is, there is my country." Paine replied, "Where liberty is not, there is mine.' As a revolutionary Paine fits neither the pattern of the D.A.R. nor the formula of the Red. Theodore Roosevelt dismissed him as a "filthy little atheist," a calumny which still reflects conventional opinion. His lib- ertarian and democratic principles were of the eighteenth century, re-* mote from the class-consciousness and the economic determinism of the contemporary radical. One thing, however, all revolutions since Paine's age have had in common. Revolu- tions, it seems, are brought to the boiling point by propaganda. That is true today. It was also true in revolutionary America. T om Paine in his time was the master propagandist of them all. "I know but one kind of life I am fit for," he wrote, "and that is a think- ing one, and, of course, a writing one." GouveneurMorris, whotdid not love Paine, subtracted one item from this self-inventory, but let the other stand. Morris allowed him "an excellent pen to write . . . but an indifferent head to think." Certainly there is a dearth of truly original ideas in Paine's writings. But few men have excelled him in putting ideas to work in the minds of ordinary folk. When the staymaker of Norfolk, the cashiered exciseman, Tom Paine, emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774, there was little in his defeated career to forecast his role as the supreme With a letter of introduction, from Franklin he got the editorship of the Pennsylvania Magazine; wrote on subjects which attracted his insati- able curiosity; began as a controver- sialist by attacking Negro slavery. Philadelphia was the meeting place of the continental congresses. Paine watched as an outsider the festering dispute with the mother country. By January, 1776, he had prepared his amazing intervention. By January, 1776, the war in New England was nearly nine months old. January 9, 1776. From a Phila- delphia press came the pamphlet which rent the veil: Common Sense, "Written by an Englishman." Ben Franklin, some said, was the real author; others attributed it to John Adams. This was high praise. But soon John Adams himself was writ- ing to Abigail:'"His name is Paine, a gentleman about two years ago from England-a man who, General Lee says, has genius in his eyes." Paine had struck at the precise psychological moment, when news had just spread of the King's un- bending speech to Parliament and the burning of Norfolk. He had struck with sledge-hammer blows to de- molish the prestige of kings; to ridi- cule the notion that an island could rule a continent. Never had any issue from an American press found sue' a sale. Within three months it is laid that at least 120,000 copies of Common Sense had been distributed. Washington, among others, soon re- marked that it was "working a pro- found change in the minds of men." But Common Sense was not an iso- lated tour de force. In December, 1776, Washington was in retreat across New Jersey. Paine began the first number of The American Crisis: "These are the times thattrynmen's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his coun- try . . ." The successive numbers of The Crisis (1776-83) mirror in extra- ordinary journalism the issues of the time. They show not merely Paine's genius for the moving phrase, but his' increasing mastery of all the weapons of popular appeal-incisive argument, the thrust of sarcasm, even (rather rarely) the leaven of humor. William Cobbett wrote with pardonable exag- geration of the principles of the Rev- olution that "it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles into action." TOM PAINE, FRIEND OF MAN- KIND. By Hesketh Pearson. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1937. $3.00. By PROF. H. B. CALDERWOOD Men who have made reputations a the champions of causes are saint. or sinners according to one's sympa- thies. Tom Paine was one of such men. In this anniversary biography by Hesketh Pearson it is made plainI to the readers why the name of Tom Paine could provoke spirited con- troversy among his contemporaries and contradictory epithets from their descendants. The author has suc- ceeded in presenting his subject as a "credible human being" without re- moving all the glamour (or odium) that has been associated with his name. In writing of Paine "pri- marily as a man" he has not, however, been able to forget that Paine was and is an historical figure whose claim to greatness should be de- fended, and he has omitted informa- Lion which leaves the reader in doubt E about certain phases of Paine's life