life been compounded. Their influence has extended in all directions,
in all walks of industry. They have left their impress upon the
character of the country, upon the mob and the individual. Sentimental
attachment to the old ties, to boyhood ideals and traditions remains
potent though a little concealed by the mask, be it affected or real,
of sophistication. It is the voice of a new land, of a vigorous and
curious nationalism that is being exerted. There obviously cannot
be among such a naturally healthy people a supercilious contempt
for sentiment. We may laugh a little haughtily at the amazing
susceptibility of folks to the extravagant eloquence of itinerant
evangelists. We may look on an “old home week” with a touch of urban
disdain. We may listen to the band concert on a Saturday night in
the Court House Square with a studied indifference. We may assume an
attractive weariness in watching the promenaders on Main Street visit
one ice-cream emporium after another. But deep down in our hearts is a
feeling of invincible pride in the charming homeliness, the youthful
vitality, the fine simplicity, yes, and the sweeping pathos of these
aspects of small-town civilization.
LOUIS RAYMOND REID
HISTORY
“Nescire autem quid antea quam natus sis
acciderit id est semper puerum esse.”
_Cicero._
“History is bunk.”
_Henry Ford_
The burghers of Holland, being (like the Chinese) inclined towards
a certain conservatism of both manners and habits, continued the
tradition of the “front parlour”--the so-called “good-room”--well into
the 20th century. Every farmer had his “front parlour” filled with
stuffy air, stuffy furniture, and an engraving of the Eiffel Tower
facing the lithographic representation of a lady in mid-seas clinging
desperately to a somewhat ramshackle granite cross.
But the custom was not restricted to the bucolic districts. His late
Majesty, William III (whose funeral was the most useful event of
his long life), had been married to an estimable lady of Victorian
proclivities, who loved a “tidy” and an “antimacassar” better than
life itself. An aristocracy, recruited from the descendants of East
India Directors and West India sugar planters, followed the Royal
Example. They owned modest homes which the more imaginative Latin
would have called “Palazzi.” Most of the ground floor was taken up
by an immense “front parlour.” For the greater part of the year it
was kept under lock and key while the family clustered around the oil
lamp of the “back parlour” where they lived in the happy cacophony of
young daughters practising Czerny and young sons trying to master the
intricacies of “paideuo--paideueis--paideuei.”
As for the “front parlour” (which will form the main part of my text),
it was opened once or twice a twelve-month for high family functions.
A week beforehand, the cleaning woman (who received six cents per hour
in those blessed Neanderthal days) would arrive with many mops and
many brooms. The covers would be removed from the antique furniture,
the frames of the pictures would be duly scrubbed. The carpets were
submitted to a process which resembled indoor ploughing and for fully
half an hour each afternoon the windows were opened to the extent of
three or four inches.
Then came the day of the reception--the birthday party of the
grandfather--the betrothal of the young daughter. All the relatives
were there in their best silks and satins. The guests were there in
ditto. There was light and there was music. There was enough food and
drink to keep an entire Chinese province from starving. Yet the party
was a failure. The old family portraits--excellent pieces by Rembrandt
or Terborch--looked down upon grandchildren whom they did not know.
The grandchildren, on the other hand, were quite uncomfortable in the
presence of this past glory. Sometimes, when the guests had expressed
a sincere admiration of these works of art, they hired a hungry Ph.D.
to write a critical essay upon their collection for the benefit of the
“Studio” or the “Connoisseur.” Then they ordered a hundred copies,
which they sent to their friends that they might admire (and perhaps
envy) the ancient lineage of their neighbours. Thereafter, darkness and
denim covers and oblivion.
The history of our great Republic suffers from a fate similar to that
of these heirlooms. It lives in the “front parlour” of the national
consciousness. It is brought out upon a few grand occasions when it
merely adds to the general discomfort of the assisting multitude.
For the rest of the time it lies forgotten in the half dark of those
Washington cellars which for lack of National Archives serve as a
receptacle for the written record of our past.
Our popular estimate of history and the value of a general historical
background was defined a few years ago by Henry Ford. Mr. Ford, having
made a dozen flivvers go where none went before and having gained
untold wealth out of the motor-car industry, had been appointed an
ex-officio and highly esteemed member of our national Council of Wise
Men. His opinion was eagerly asked upon such subjects as child-raising,
irrigation, the future of the human race, and the plausibility of
the Einstein theory. During a now memorable trial the subject of
history came up for discussion, and Mr. Ford (if we are to believe the
newspaper accounts) delivered himself of the heartfelt sentiment that
“history is bunk.” A grateful country sang Amen!
When asked to elucidate this regrettable expression of dislike,
the average citizen will fall back upon reminiscences of his early
childhood and in terms both contrite and unflattering he will thereupon
describe the hours of misery which he has spent reciting “dreary facts
about useless kings,” winding up with a wholesale denunciation of
American history as something dull beyond words.
We cannot say much in favour of late Stuarts, Romanoffs, and Wasa’s,
but we confess to a sincere affection for the history of these United
States. It is true there are few women in it and no little children.
This, to us, seems an advantage. “Famous women of history” usually
meant “infamous trouble” for their much perturbed contemporaries. As
for the ever-popular children motif, the little princes of the Tower
would have given a great deal had they been allowed to whitewash part
of Tom Sawyer’s famous fence, instead of waiting in silken splendour
for Uncle Richard’s murder squad.
No, the trouble is not with the history of this land of endless plains
and a limitless sky. The difficulty lies with the reader. He is the
victim of an unfortunate circumstance. The Muses did not reach these
shores in the first-class cabin of the _Aquitania_. They were almost
held up at Ellis Island and deported because they did not have the
necessary fifty dollars. They were allowed to sneak in after they had
given a solemn promise that they would try to become self-supporting
and would turn their white hands to something useful.
Clio, our revered mistress, has tried hard to live up to this vow.
But she simply is not that sort of woman. An excellent counsellor,
the most charming and trusted of friends, she has absolutely no gift
for the practical sides of life. She was forced to open a little
gift-shop where she sold flags and bunting and pictures of Pocahontas
and Paul Revere. The venture was not a success. A few people took pity
on her and tried to help. She was asked to recite poetry at patriotic
gatherings and do selections from the “Founding Fathers.” She did not
like this, being a person of shy and unassuming character. And so she
is back in the little shop. When last I saw her, she was trying to
learn the Russian alphabet. That is always a dangerous sign.
And now, lest we continue to jumble our metaphors, let us state the
case with no more prejudice than is strictly necessary.
The earliest settlers of this country brought their history with them.
Little Snorri, son of Gudrid and Thorfinn Karlsefni, playing amidst
the vines of his father’s Labradorian garden, undoubtedly listened to
the selfsame sagas that were being told at the court of good King Olaf
Tryggvason in distant Norway. The children of San Domingo shared the
glories of the Cid with the boys and girls who visited the schools of
Moukkadir’s ancient capital. And the long-suffering infants of the
early New England villages merely finished an historical education
that had begun at Scrooby and had been continued at No. 21 of the
_Kloksteeg_ in Leyden.
During the 17th century, the greater part of the Atlantic coast became
English. The Dutch and the French, the Spanish and Swedish traditions
disappeared. The history of the British Kingdom became the universal
history of the territory situated between the thirtieth and the
fiftieth degree of latitude. Even the American Revolution was a quarrel
between two conflicting versions of certain identical principles of
history. Lord North and George Washington had learned their lessons
from the same text-book. His Lordship, of course, never cut the pages
that told of Runymede, and George undoubtedly covered the printed
sheets which told of the fate of rebels with strange geometrical
figures. But the historical inheritance of the men who fought on the
left bank of the Fish Kill and those who surrendered on the right shore
was a common one, and Burgoyne and Gates might have spent a profitable
evening sharing a bottle of rum and complimenting each other upon the
glorious deeds of their respective but identical ancestors.
But during the ’twenties and ’thirties of the 19th century, the
men of the “old régime”--the founder and fighters of the young
Republic--descended into the grave and they took their traditions,
their hopes, and their beliefs with them. The curtain rose upon a
new time and upon a new people. The acquisition of the Northwestern
Territory in 1787 and the purchase of Napoleon’s American real-estate
in the year 1803 had changed a little commonwealth of struggling
Colonies into a vast empire of endless plains and unlimited forests.
It was necessary to populate this new land. The history of the Coast
came to an end. The history of the Frontier began. English traditions
rarely crossed the Alleghanies. The long struggle for representative
government took on a new aspect in a land where no king had ever set
foot and where man was sovereign by the good right of his own energy.
It is true that the first fifty years of the last century witnessed the
arrival upon these shores of millions of men and women from Europe who
had enjoyed a grammar school education in the land of their birth. But
dukes do not emigrate. Those sturdy fellows who risked the terrors and
horrors of the Atlantic in the leaky tubs of the early forties came to
the country of their future that they might forget the nightmare of the
past. That nightmare included the biography of Might which was then
the main feature of the European text-book. They threw it overboard as
soon as they were well outside of the mouth of the Elbe or the Mersey.
Settled upon the farms of Michigan and Wisconsin, they sometimes taught
their children the songs of the old Fatherland but its history never.
After two generations, this migration--the greatest of all “treks”
since the 4th century--came to an end. Roads had been made, canals had
been dug, railroads had been constructed, forests had been turned into
pastures, the Indian was gone, the buffalo was gone, free land was
gone, cities had been built, and the scene had been made ready for the
final apotheosis of all human accomplishment--civilization.
The schoolmaster has ever followed in the wake of the full dinner-pail.
He now made his appearance and began to teach. Considering the
circumstances he did remarkably well. But he too worked under a
disadvantage. He was obliged to go to New England for his learning
and for his text-books. And the historian of the Boston school,
while industrious and patient, was not entirely a fair witness. The
recollection of British red-coats drilling on the Common was still
fresh in the minds of many good citizens. The wickedness of George III
was more than a myth to those good men and women whose own fathers had
watched Major Pitcairn as he marched forth to arrest Adams and Hancock.
They sincerely hated their former rulers, while they could not deny
their love for the old mother country. Hence there arose a conflict of
grave consequence. With one hand the New England chronicler twisted the
tail of the British lion. With the other he fed the creature little
bits of sugar.
Again the scene changed. The little red school-house had marched across
the plains. It had followed the pioneer through the passes of the
Rocky Mountains. It had reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The
time of hacking and building and frying with lard came to a definite
end. The little red school-house gave way for the academy of learning.
College and University arose wherever a thousand people happened to be
together. History became a part of the curriculum. The schoolmaster,
jack of all learned trades and master of many practical pursuits,
became extinct. The professional historian made his appearance. And
thereby hangs a sad tale which takes us to the barren banks of the
Spree.
Ever since the Thirty Years War, Germany had been the battlefield of
Europe. The ambitions of the Napoleon who was four feet tall and smooth
shaven and the prospective ambitions of the Napoleon who was five feet
tall and who waxed his moustachios, had given and were actually giving
that country very little rest. The intelligentsia of the defunct Holy
Roman Empire saw but a single road which could lead to salvation. The
old German State must be re-established and the kings of Prussia must
become heirs to the traditions of Charlemagne. To prove this point
it was necessary that the obedient subjects of half a hundred little
potentates be filled with certain definite historical notions about
the glorious past of Heinrich the Fat and Konrad the Lean. The patient
historical camels of the Teutonic universities were driven into the
heart of _Historia Deserta_ and brought back those stupendous bricks
of learning out of which the rulers of the land could build their
monuments to the glorious memory of the Ancestors.
Whatever their faults and however misguided the ambition of these
faithful beasts of burden, they knew how to work. The whole world
looked on with admiration. Here, at last, in this country of scientific
precision, history had been elevated to the rank of a “_Wissenschaft_.”
Carrying high their banners, “For God, for Country, _und wie es
eigentlich dagewesen_,” all good historians went upon a crusade to save
the Holy Land of the Past from the Ignorance of the Present.
That was in the blessed days when a first-class passage to Hamburg and
Bremen cost forty-six dollars and seventy-five cents. Henry Adams and
John Lothrop Motley were among the first of the pilgrims. They drank a
good deal of beer, listened to many excellent concerts, and assisted,
“privatissime and gratis,” at the colloquia docta of many highly
learned _Geheimräte_, and departed before they had suffered serious
damage. Others did not fare as well. Three--four--five years they spent
in the company of the Carolingians and the Hohenstaufens. After they
had soaked themselves sufficiently in Ploetz and Bernheim to survive
the _Examen Rigorosum_ of the _Hochgelehrte Facultät_, they returned to
their native shore to spread the gospel of true _Wissenschaftlichkeit_.
There was nothing typically American in this. It happened to the
students of every country of the globe.
Of course, in making this point, we feel that we expose ourselves to
the accusation of a slight exaggeration. “How now,” the industrious
reader exclaims, “would you advocate a return to the uncritical days
of the Middle Ages?” To which we answer, “By no means.” But history,
like cooking or fiddling, is primarily an art. It embellishes life. It
broadens our tolerance. It makes us patient of bores and fools. It is
without the slightest utilitarian value. A handbook of chemistry or
higher mathematics has a right to be dull. A history, never. And the
professional product of the Teutonic school resembled those later-day
divines who tried to console the dying by a recital of the Hebrew verb
_abhar_.
This system of preaching the gospel of the past filled the pulpits but
it emptied the pews. The congregation went elsewhere for its historical
enlightenment. Those who were seriously interested turned to the works
of a few laymen (hardware manufacturers, diplomats, coal-dealers,
engineers) who devoted their leisure hours to the writing of history,
or imported the necessary intellectual pabulum from abroad. Others took
to the movies and since those temples of democratic delight do not open
before the hour of noon, they spent the early morning perusing the
endless volumes of reminiscences, memoirs, intimate biographies, and
recollections which flood the land with the energy of an intellectual
_cloaca maxima_.
But all this, let us state it once more, did not matter very much.
When all is peace and happiness--when the hospitals are empty of
patients--when the weather is fine and people are dying at the usual
rate--it matters little whether the world at large takes a deep
interest in the work of the Board of Health. The public knows that
somewhere, somehow, someway, there exists a Board of Health composed
of highly trained medical experts. They also appreciate from past
experiences that these watchful gentlemen “know their job” and that no
ordinary microbe can hope to move from Warsaw to Chicago without prompt
interference on the part of the delousing squad. But when an epidemic
threatens the safety of the community, then the public hastens to the
nearest telephone booth--calls up the Health Commissioners and follows
their instructions with implicit faith. It demands that these public
servants shall spend the days of undisturbed health to prepare for the
hour of sickness when there is no time for meditation and experiment.
The public at large had a right to expect a similar service from its
historians. But unfortunately, when the crisis came, the scientific
historical machine collapsed completely.
In Germany, the home country of the system of _historische
Wissenschaftlichkeit_, the historian became the barker outside the
Hohenzollern main tent, shouting himself hoarse for the benefit of
half-hearted fellow citizens and hostile neutrals, extolling the
ancestral Teutonic virtues until the whole world turned away in
disgust. In France, they arrange those things better. Even the most
unhealthy mess of nationalistic scraps can be turned into a palatable
dish by a competent cook of the Parisian school. In England, the
historian turned propagandist, and for three years, the surprised
citizens of Copenhagen, Bern, and Madrid found their mail boxes
cluttered with mysterious bundles of state documents duly stamped,
beautifully illustrated, and presented (as the enclosed card showed)
with the compliments of Professor So-and-so of Such-and-such College,
Oxford, England. In Russia, a far-seeing government had taken its
measures many years before. Those historians who had refused to be used
as _cheval de bataille_ for the glory of the house of Romanoff, were
either botanising along the banks of the Lena or had long since found
a refuge in the universities of Sofia and Geneva. I do not know what
happened in Japan, but I have a suspicion that it was the same thing,
the entire world over.
The historian turned apologist. He was as useful as a doctor who would
show a partiality to the native streptococcus on the grounds of loyalty
to the land of his birth.
What happened on this side of the ocean after the first three years of
“peace without victory” had given place to “force to the uttermost” is
too well known to demand repetition. Long before the first American
destroyer reached Plymouth, the staunch old vessel of history had been
_spurlos versenkt_ in the _mare clausum_ of the Western hemisphere.
Text-books were recalled, rehashed, and revamped to suit the needs of
the hour. Long and most deservedly forgotten treatises were called
back to life and with the help of publishers’ blurbs and reviews by
members of the self-appointed guardians of national righteousness
they were sent forth to preach the gospel of domestic virtue. Strange
encyclopædias of current information were concocted by volunteers from
eager faculties. The public mind was a blank. For a hundred years
the little children had learned to dislike history and grown-ups had
revaluated this indifference into actual hate. This situation had been
created to maintain on high the principles of scientific historical
investigation. Let popular interest perish as long as the Truth stand
firm. But in the hour of need, the guardians of the Truth turned
gendarmes, the doors of Clio’s temple were closed, and the public
was invited to watch the continuation of the performance in the next
moving-picture house. At Versailles the curtain went down upon the
ghastly performance.
After the first outbreak of applause the enthusiasm waned. Who had
been responsible for this terrible tragedy? The supposed authors were
branded as enemies of mankind. Nations tottered and ancient Empires
crumbled to dust and were hastily carried to the nearest historical
scrapheap. The ambitious monarch, who for thirty years had masqueraded
as a second Charlemagne, made his exit amidst properties borrowed from
the late King Louis Philippe. The gay young leader of the Death Head
Hussars developed into the amateur bicycle-repairer of the island of
Wieringen. International reputations retailed at a price which could
only be expressed in Soviet rubles and Polish marks and no takers. The
saviour of the world became the invalid of the White House. But not a
word was said about those inconspicuous authors of very conspicuous
historical works who had been the henchmen of the _Oberste_ and
_Unterste Kriegsherren_. They went back to the archives to prepare the
necessary post-mortem statements. These are now being published at a
price which fortunately keeps them well out of reach of the former
soldiers.
In certain dramas and comedies of an older day it was customary to
interrupt the action while the Chorus of moralising Villagers reviewed
what had gone before and drew the necessary conclusions. It is time for
the “goat-singers” to make their appearance.
“Are you, O Author,” so they speak, “quite fair when you pronounce
these bitter words? Are we not all human--too human? Is it reasonable
to demand of our historians that they shall possess such qualities of
detached judgment as have not been seen on this earth since the last
of the Mighty Gods departed from High Olympus? Has a historian no
heart? Do you expect him to stand by and discuss the virtues of vague
political questions, when all the world is doing its bit--while his
children are risking their lives for the safety of the common land?”
And when we are approached in this way, we find it difficult to answer
“no.” For we too are an animated compound of prejudice and unreasonable
preferences and even more unreasoning dislikes, and we do not like to
assume the rôle of both judge and jury.
The evidence, however, gives us no chance to decide otherwise. What
was done in the heat of battle--what was done under the stress of
great and sincere emotions--what was written in the agony of a thousand
fears--all that will be forgotten within a few years. But enough will
remain to convince our grandchildren that the historian was among those
most guilty of creating that “state of mind” without which modern
warfare would be an impossibility.