In giving the rising generation a true understanding of what we as Americans owe the nation that stood by us in our time of trial, we shall be training them to an ideal higher than that of mere patriotism, namely, that of justice. A decided step in this direction was taken a few years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, caused a statue of the French General Rochambeau to be erected at Washington and in so doing opened the way to a more general recognition of a great historical truth. In 1917, the arrival upon our shores of the Allied Missions has struck a new note in our national consciousness. Resentment towards England has died away long ago and warm friendship has taken its place. For France nothing but the most enthusiastic admiration exists, and men’s minds everywhere are opening to a new realization of the part that that country has always played in the grand epic of human emancipation. But America’s debt of gratitude to France never can be fully repaid until she has been brought to consider the claims of the one Frenchman who was the first of all Europeans to recognize the importance of the uprising among the colonists. This is no other than Caron de Beaumarchais, the secret agent to whom Silas Deane had been directed by the French Ministers in 1776. That his claim to the gratitude of Americans has so long been neglected is due to a complexity of causes, chief of which is the fact that not until 1886 were the archives of the French Government touching this period, given to the public.[9] Among these archives may be found the complete outline of the help given by France to America during the period which elapsed between the arrival of Deane in 1776 and the open recognition by France of American Independence in 1778, all of which aid passed through the hands of Beaumarchais. After a careful study of these documents it must be conceded that to him belongs the credit of having roused the French Government to a realization of the honorable part it might play in the great conflict. Long before the historic dinner at Metz, where Lafayette conceived his chivalrous design, before even the Signing of the Declaration of Independence, Beaumarchais had planned and worked out the details of the aid to be rendered by France and then literally had forced the cautious and conservative government of France into acquiescence with his plans.