Evening Post. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1918. OUR HISTORY OF THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 138, 11 June 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1918. OUR HISTORY OF THE WAR

Under the authority of the New Zealand Government, New Zealand is to have two histories of New Zealand's share in the war—an official history and a popular one. As far as it goes, this plan of work is, we think, excellent, but its success will necessarily depend upon the judgment and skill applied to the execution of it. Whoever undertakes the project will start off at any rate with this advantage—that he will be nnder no obligation to satisfy the historical specialist and the popular reader at one and the same time. All those things that may be required by the serious student of the sciences of war and politics, but not by the man who runs as he reads, may find their proper place in the official history, and thus may be fittingly recorded without becoming in any way a drag upon the light and easy motion of the more crystallised volume which the Government oxpects to see in future upon every New Zealand book-shelf. Considering the task of character-build-ing and nation-making that ■ confronts this, still young country, we cannot imagine a Government setting its hand to anything more "important than the popular history of the war that Sir James Allen projects,. If any similar effort can compa-re witli it in importance, it will he such history as may be taught in the schools; and we are not certain that a school history should not take equal rank with - the popular and the official volumes in the Government's scheme for preserving and presenting the facts and the lessons of the war. Since the child fathers the man, the juvenile History surely is peer with the popular and the profound. Such a trinity of excellence is not only worth striving for. It is worthy of the very best that the State and its historians have to ofier.

Hardly necessary is it to add that the historian who conld accomplish all three tasks would have to be a rare class of man, with a mind and a style highly adaptable. Whether he is discoverable, either inside or outside New Zealand, we do not know; but it is certain that there is a competent New Zealander available for any one of the three tasks taken singly—or for either of the two, if the Government plan is confined to two. It is not, however, necessary at this stage to discuss that question. Before the tasks are allotted, they should first be demarcated; and there is quite a deal of spade work to do in preparing a syllabus, and in. plotting out, as far as possible, the range of- the official history and the scope of the popular one. Unless the Government's idea, which is basically sound, is elaborated in a clear and workable manner, the success that might reasonably be expected for such an undertaking will not prevail. At present there is just such a. gap between idea and working plan as wrecked the Gallipoli expedition. The report of the Royal Commission thereon has shown —and the histories now in prospect will hereafter show—that the Gallipoli idea was the soundest of strategy. It failed through lack of planning, and consequent faultiness of application.

If the Government will appoint a competent editor of its histories without at this stage committing itself as to the actual authorship, it will presently be able to see its way through the problem much, more dearly.' The word editor is not used in the technical newspaper sense; we mean someone with a range of vision, competent to plan, demarcate, organise. A sense of the popular mentality, as well as an understanding of the academic side, is a prime requirement. Also, the appointment should be —what some appointments in the past have riot been —above suspicion of wirepulling or political colour. What is wanted in the New Zealand History is not a catalogue of facts nor a burst of rhetorical flamboyance. . We can quite easily preserve the New Zealand drum-and-trumpet without perpetrating a history of the drum-and-trumpet type repudiated by Green. The importance of the editorship and of the preliminary collection of data is added to by the fact that history has long since ceased to be storywriting. History, it has been written, " involves two distinct operations, one of which, investigation, is in the field' of science, while the other, the literacy presentation, is in the field of art." And since history is as much investigation as presentation, it' is not enough to say that, under some sort of direction,, "the way is being prepared for historians." That preparatory work is as important as any. It should be thoroughly systematised under a person of competence. '