Evening Past, SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1028. BIASED HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 12

Evening Past, SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1028. BIASED HISTORY

It is to be hoped that the hearty agreement which Mr. Baldwin has expressed with "Big Bill's" preference for biased history has not been misunderstood in Chicago. Mr. Baldwin does not mean that, if King George has not been poking his "snoot" into Chicago, the Mayor of Chicago or anybody else should say that he has, or that the historian is belter employed in telling lies than in exposing them. The real meaning of Mr. Baldwin's paradox was that in order to communicate an interest in his subject a historian must be interested in it himself, that he is rhost likely to be both interested and interesting if he takes a side, and that to interest a reader even on the wrong side gives him a better introduction to the subject than to bore him with such a colourless presentment of it as will deter further inquiry. From the "lay and ignorant point of view," which he always claims to represent, Mr. Baldwin had stated the point less equivocally in his address of welcome to the members of the Anglo-American Conference of Historians at King's College, London, eighteen months ago. I have always felt myself, he said, that the most readable histories and the best things to start on are the really biased ones, because I always feel that unless a man makes his characters into heroes or devils, or both, he seldom is an interesting writer. (Laughter.) .... I am quite sure that if you tried to bring up a youth on entirely unbiased history he would never read it at all. I don't know whether the attempt has ever been made to bring up the budding historian on Stubbs, whom 'I believe to be quito unbiased, but whom peoplo would perhaps think a little difficult for a start. (Laughter.) As historians, Stubbs and the Mayor of Chicago may be said to represent the opposite poles. Stubbs, the laborious, the judicial, the inerrant, is also from "the lay and ignorant point of view" the unreadable. Without any of Stubbs's virtues, "Big Bill" as the censor of the crimes of George 111. and George V. is at least supremely readable. Froissart and Walter Scott opened the doors of biased history to Mr. Baldwin's infant mind. In due course he "passed on to the men one enjoyed most —Macaulay, Froude, Carlyle, and Clarendon—but they were all as biased as they could stick." Whether they could slick it out in this department with William Hale Thompson may be open to doubt, but without invidious comparisons Mr. Baldwin has recognised in him a kindred spirit and admitted him to the gallery. Though in his views both of politics and of history "Big Bill" is mostly a freak, they are representative to an extent which gives them a serious importance. Politically, he is for the third time the ruler by popular choice of a city with more than a million inhabitants. In history his ignorance and his animus are but an extravagant parody of views which are widely held and exercise a permanent control over American policy. "We must have an unsullied history," says Mr. Charles Grant Miller, and that can only mean, and in practice is not interpreted in Chicago only as meaning, that any inconvenient facts tending to sully American history must be coloured or suppressed. Here is a more specifically representative utterance: The chief purpose to be served by the teaching of history is the inculcation of patriotism. Thus spoke the Sons of the American Revolution four or five years ago, and without further evidence than their name one might infer the kind of patriotism that they have in view and the means by which it must be supported. Not truth but patriotism is to be the supreme object. The traditions of the American Revolution must be faithfully maintained. The meaning of the demand for "an unsullied history" is that it would be better to sully the record itself with inaccuracy than by telling the truth to detract from the reputation of the "Founding Fathers" or from the disrepute of the nation and the Government against which they fought. Though the foundation of the tradition alike of American virtue and of British oppression is to a large extent mythical,.it is none the less powerful on that account. "A mixture of a lie," says Bacon, "doth ever add pleasure." It certainly does so when the added ingredient makes for the glorification of self and the disparagement of others. A tradition thoroughly pleasing to American vanity has been so assiduously fostered as to perpetuate on one side the feelings of estrangement which were never equally strong on the other side and have long since almost entirely disappeared. It is a strong and deeply-rooted sentiment which "Big Bill" is endeavouring to exploit, and it is fortunate that he is doing so with an extravagance which is defeating his own ends. It is still more fortunate that his chief obstacles are not the machinations of King George and his myrmidons but the teaching of best historians of America and the good sense and the sense of humour of the American people. It was not from British but from American sources, and particularly from the Faculty of History in the University of Chicago, that Superintendent M'Andrew was ac- { cused by the Mayor of deriving the

propaganda "to destroy the love of America in the hearts of the children." "The historian who loves truth is most likely to love his country," says Mr. James Truslow Adams. There seems to be be no escaping from this proposition except on the assumption that the country is not worth loving—an assumption which those Americans who desire to subordinate truth to patriotism are certainly not prepared to make. Differing from them, Mr. Adams, who stands in the front rank of American historians, believes that his country's interests will be best served by the truth, and as a historian he refuses to follow any other guide. In an article entitled "Home Thoughts from Abroad" which appears in the October "Atlantic Monthly" Mr. Adams bears striking testimony both to the fidelity with which ideal is pursued in England and to the tolerance and the generosity with which the historical differences between the two countries are there regarded. In a number of English histories which I have been reading, he writes, all for English readers and some for English children, the Revolution is treated with such a spirit' of fairness and with so little hostility as to raiso the question whether the authors have made out as good a case for their ancestors as they well might. The idea that England hates the Americans because she has never forgotten the Revolution is dismissed by Mr. Adams as "perhaps the most absurd opinion which many people in the smaller communities in America hold." The first reason given for this judgment is that British Imperialism is of comparatively recent growth, and that "so far from regretting the loss of the United States the country was in favour of divesting itself as soon as possible of the rest of its imperial possessions." But Mr. Adams adds a second reason which is much more flattering to British vanity. The reason why Britain feels no resentment against the Americans for beating her is that they never did beat her! Here are Mr. Adams's very words:— England has no grievance or rankling soreness from being defeated by Americans. There is a simple reason for this usually ignored at home. It is that she never was so defeated. She was not beaten by her colonies, but by a coalition of European Powers that came to their aid. Washington admitted that tho game was lost- and that the only salvation was to have France, at least, enter the fight. Not only did Franco do so,, but Spain also, and England was fighting all over the world as ' well as in America, and continued to do so a year and more after Cornwallis surrendered. She was beaten only by the combined power of nearly half the civilised world. This chivalrous American historian is surely much better deserving than King George of th ye patriotic attentions of "Big Bill."