Between the United Nations and Conspiracy: Unexpected Discoveries on William G. Carr

One World in the Making by William G. Carr. Ginn and Company. 1946.

In  One World in the Making, author William G. Carr states the purpose for this book in no uncertain terms, right there in the Foreword.


"THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN WITH JUST ONE SIMPLE PURPOSE: to make it as easy as possible for anyone, young or old, to understand the United Nations Charter."

And as you can see, William G. Carr added the capitalization himself--today's textual equivalent of screaming.

William G. Carr is listed on the title page as a United Nations consultant and Deputy Secretary-General for the educational and cultural arm of the United Nations Conference

(2) William Guy Carr  R.D. Commander R.C.N

In photos of Mr. Carr, he looks  every bit the part of a United Nations expert.  And so he should.

Born in England and educated in Scotland, Mr. Carr chose the seafaring and military life at the young age of fourteen. (1)  He served as a navigating officer in the British Navy, seeing extensive combat action serving aboard submarines.(2)  During World War II he worked for the Canadian Intelligence Service, afterward retiring from the Navy in 1950. (1)

Amid and between his active service Mr. Carr wrote and published books about his battle experiences, including By Guess and By God  (1930), Hell's Angels of the Deep (1932) and Checkmate in the North  (1944). (1)  

So One World in the Making  would seem to fit in neatly with Mr. Carr's military experience. 

I'll return to the story of William Guy Carr shortly--and believe me there is much more story to tell--but let's turn to One World in the Making  first.

This book starts off well in fulfilling its goals of making the United Nations understandable for anyone.

The front end paper features a bold red and black diagram of the main historic events leading to the formation of the UN.   It's eye-catching, simply labeled and festooned with adorable little icons for each geographic place listed.

 The first 14 pages are equally effective, including illustrations, photographs and explanations written in a conversational style  using easily accessible language.

On the 14th page is a tidy paragraph that neatly lays out who would be eligible to belong to the United Nations.  It is written in almost a storybook style, with repetitive phrases and easy descriptions.

Most unfortunately, this is also where nearly all the clarity of this book ends.

 Starting on page 15 and continuing on for the next 75 pages, Mr. Carr introduces a complex series of charts, analogies and icons that had me flipping back and forth repeatedly as I tried to make sense of them.   After 3 or 4 head-scratching tries I found the logic within the seeming madness, and while it was ultimately rather elegant, it did nothing to fulfill the goals of the book to make the UN accessible to anyone and everyone.


 The last approximately 50 pages consist of seemingly cut-and-pasted mock ups of the actual UN charter, the contents of which are explained and discussed using little pull out boxes, much like side bar editing features in today's word processing programs.

The descriptions themselves are clear, but the design of the pages, coupled with the presence of icons designed to refer back to branches of government, created an overwhelming whole on which I eventually gave up.

At the end, right before a section entitled "Study Helps", are two pages of signatures of the fifty nations that signed the UN Charter in San Francisco on April 25th, 1945.  These two pages of signatures had greater impact on me than the previous seventy five.  As my eyes scanned down the list of countries and signatures, noting countries that were included and those that were not,  I was able to clearly reflect on the history of the time, the complexities of politics and geography and war.   These signatures added a human stamp to a book that, for all it's hopes, made the creation of the United Nations seem dry, distant and impossibly complex. 

And at least one young reader seems to have agreed with me, for on the last end paper was this editorial remark:










But wait!  We must return to William Guy Carr.  After writing this very proper book about the United Nations and subsequently retiring from active military service, Mr. Carr abandoned his writings of war memoirs and delved deeply and permanently into the world of conspiracy theories.

And he didn't just dabble in conspiracy theories.  As quoted on Goodreads and other websites, William Carr was  "the most influential source in creating the American Illuminati demonology", (American folklorist Bill Ellis) (3)

Mr. Carr's books began to take a decidedly different turn.  He churned out multiple books detailing an Illuminati conspiracy: Pawns in the Game (1955),  Red Fog over America (1955),  Satan Prince of this World (1959)  and published posthumously, The Conspiracy to Destroy All Existing Governments and Religions (approx. 1960).  (1).  In addition he published numerous papers and articles, all focusing, laser-like, on a vast conspiracy in which Christianity, the Illuminati, our country's founding fathers, countless nations around the world, money, war and power are all tied up in a vast and terrifying racist/anti-semitic bundle in which Mr. Carr passionately believed until his death in 1959. (1)(4)

To say I was shocked to discover this hidden truth behind the author of my $5 vintage book discovery would be an understatement.  However as I have discovered time and again in my vintage book quests, you really can't judge a book--or an author or an illustrator--by the cover.  Sometimes the most unremarkable book can hold secrets--either divine or diabolical--which we least expect.

Now when I see One World in the Making on my shelf, I won't see a mild-mannered history book, but the conspiratorial madness behind the eyes of an unassuming retired military man for whom the brutal impacts of battle and world politics may have left too deep of a mark.  











Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Guy_Carr

2. http://educate-yourself.org/cn/carrglobalistsaresatanists27feb13.shtml

3. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/238948.William_Guy_Carr

4. http://www.michaeljournal.org/pawns.asp

Readers and Primers and Spellers--Oh MY!

Much to my delight, I have recently found myself in a glorious position to help survey and catalogue the Weinstein Collection of antique and vintage children's books at National Louis University in Skokie, Illinois.

So a few days ago I was doing what I typically do when facing shelf upon shelf of these splendid books--I stared with my mouth hanging open and my eyes sliding along the laden shelves--waiting for that moment when a book jumped out at me.

And so it did:

Graded School Series First Reader by T. W. Harvey
Van Antwerp,Bragg  & Co. 1875

I looked at the front cover.  I read the title.





















I looked at the back cover, noting the unavoidable blemishes and damage of time--the water stains, the missing corner, the yellowed, cracking pages.

















And  my mind told me "EXCELLENT!  An early edition of a McGuffey's Eclectic Reader!"


Yes, in spite of obvious visual evidence to the contrary, I thought this was an early McGuffey's Reader.

When I gingerly opened this treasure, the pages  still looked McGuffey-like enough stylistically to not trigger my brain.



In fact, it wasn't until I had closed the book, had slid it gingerly back onto the shelf and had toted my photo-filled iphone home that I realized the truth--this was no McGuffey's.

I knew McGuffey's Readers.  I had taught for years at a private school that used McGuffey's as part of the primary reading program.   While we eventually had to lay aside the McGuffey readers to accommodate the push for modern reading curricula, I still always kept a soft spot for the McGuffeys.

For those of you not in the know, this is a McGuffey's Eclectic Reader:

https://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?id=025733

McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, written by William Holmes McGuffey, were the most well-known school readers, first published in 1836 and finally going out of print in 1960. (1)

McGuffey's Readers bridged the moral themes and some of the religious themes of its predecessors (namely The New England Primer) with contemporary stories that entertained as well as taught.



McGuffey's departed in style from other readers by presenting vocabulary and spelling lists as connected to stories, which gave students the opportunity to learn new words in context. (6)  This approach was perhaps one of the reasons for the longevity of McGuffey readers when other readers and primers that came before and after it seemed to fade away from use.










However, before there were McGuffey's readers, there was The New England Primer which has the honor of being the first U.S. printed school reader, first published in the United States in 1690. (2)

http://venezky.stanford.edu/colonial/

The New England Primer leaned heavily on the Bible for content and context, unsurprising considering the Puritan roots of Colonial America.

The New England Primer is noted for combining reading instruction with moral and religious themes that gave previously illiterate people the skills needed to read the Bible for themselves, rather than have to be at the mercy of others for spiritual comfort and learning. (3)

http://venezky.stanford.edu/colonial/

With The New England Primer  leading the way, and McGuffey's Eclectic Readers adding increasingly modern approaches to reading instruction (albeit still heavily religious and moralistic, not to mention skewed exclusively to  readers of a single  ethnic, cultural and religious background), the  path was laid for the next permutation of readers--The Graded-School Readers, by Thomas W. Harvey.

And thus we come full-circle, back to the reader at the start of this post.

Thomas W. Harvey started along the path of reading and book publishing at the age of 15, working as a print office apprentice. (7)  From here his professional life rose steadily--from attending a Teacher Seminary to founding a high school, becoming principal of that high school and then being elected as Commissioner of Common Schools.  It was in this last position that Thomas Harvey wrote a series of textbooks to be used in classrooms--several grammar and language books as well as a series of first readers and primers (7)--one of which I had stumbled across.  He published his first reader in 1877.  They stayed in print until 1927. (7)



Even from these small sample pages one can see the influence McGuffey's Readers must have had on Thomas Harvey as he wrote his own primers.   Also present in a number of stories are lessons in morality, although these lessons are presented a bit more subtly by Thomas Harvey than by either McGuffey or in the New England Primer.  Harvey's readers--like the New England Primer and McGuffey readers that came before--still reflected a uniformly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant perspective of course.   This might have been a non-issue in the United States in the 1800's and early 1900's--however it is telling that even now, 300 years later, children's books still fail--in quantity and even at times in quality-- to faithfully reflect the diversity of real life.
















When I consider these three early readers, I find myself automatically comparing and contrasting them with textbooks and phonics programs I have used over the past  25 years I have  taught in  primary programs.   In the end, what we do today rests heavily on what has come before--teaching vocabulary and spelling in context, trying to present stories that have meaning and connection with student's lives, and above all nurturing the reading skills in our young students that will empower them to take charge of their own learning.   Just as the New England Primer over 300 years ago strove to enable people to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, don't we, in the end, teach children in order for them to break away and interpret the world for themselves?




Who knew that such history, power and influence could be hidden inside such a small book?







Sources

1. ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Holmes_McGuffey

2.  http://www.christianbook.com/the-new-england-primer/david-barton/9780925279170/pd/79171?gclid=CMrsw4aKj8sCFZSEaQod97wAAQ

3.  http://familyphonics.com/ab/ab1/history.htm

4. http://venezky.stanford.edu/colonial/

5. https://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?id=025733

6. http://www.mcguffeyreaders.com/1836_original.htm

7. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=22786693