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.
Here the music of the flutes grows silent. The Chorus steps back and the main action of our little play continues. The time is “the present” and the problem is “the future.” The children who are now in the second grade will be called upon to bear the burden of a very long period of reconstruction. America, their home, has been compared to an exceedingly powerful and influential woman who is not very popular but who must not be offended on account of her eminent social position. The folk who live along our international Main Street are not very well disposed towards a neighbour who holds all the mortgages and lives in the only house that has managed to survive the recent catastrophe. It will not be an easy thing to maintain the peace in the neurasthenic community of the great post-war period. It has been suggested that the Ten Commandments, when rightly applied, may help us through the coming difficulties. We beg to suggest that a thorough knowledge of the past will prove to be quite as useful as the Decalogue. We do not make this statement hastily. Furthermore, we qualify it by the observation that both History and the Decalogue will be only two of a great many other remedies that will have to be applied if the world is to be set free from its present nightmare of poison gas and high-velocity shells. But we insist that History be included. And we do so upon the statement of a learned and famous colleague who passed through a most disastrous war and yet managed to keep a cool head. We mean Thucydides. In his foreword to the History of the Peloponnesian War he wrote: “The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things, must resemble, if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.”
When we measure out achievements in the light of this ancient Greek ideal, we have accomplished very little indeed. An enormous amount of work has been done and much of it is excellent. The great wilderness of the past has been explored with diligent care and the material lies, carefully classified, in those literary museums which we call libraries. But the public refuses to go in. No one has ever been able to convince the man in the street that time employed upon historical reading is not merely time wasted. He carries with him certain hazy notions about a few names, Cæsar and Joan of Arc (since the war) and Magna Charta and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He remembers that Paul Revere took a ride, but whither and for what purpose he neither knows nor cares to investigate. The historical tie which binds him to the past and which alone can make him understand his own position in relation to the future, is non-existent. Upon special occasions the multitude is given the benefit of a grand historical pyrotechnic display, paid for by the local Chamber of Commerce, and a few disjointed facts flash by amidst the fine roar of rockets and the blaring of a brass band. But this sort of historical evangelising has as little value as the slapstick vespers which delight the congregation of Billy Sunday’s circus tent.
We live in an age of patent medicines. The short-cut to success is the modern pons asinorum which leads to happiness. And remedies which are “guaranteed to cure” are advertised down the highways and byways of our economic and social world. But no such cure exists for the sad neglect of an historical background. History can never be detached from life. It will continue to reflect the current tendencies of our modern world until that happy day when we shall discontinue the pursuit of a non-essential greatness and devote our energies towards the acquisition of those qualities of the spirit without which human existence (at its best) resembles the proverbial dog-kennel.
For the coming of that day we must be as patient as Nature.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon