The Use of Sources in Instruction in Government and Politics
BY CHARLES A. BEARD, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF POLITICS IN COLUMBUS UNIVERSITY.
What Dr. Stubbs said many years ago about the difficulty of mastering the history of institutions applies with equal force to the mastery of present institutions, especially in actual operation. Perhaps, in a way, the student of government is more fortunately situated than the student of history, for he can use the laboratory method to some extent. He may attend primaries and caucuses, visit the State capital or the City Hall, take a place among the spectators in a police court watching the daily grind, or observe the selectman, perhaps a drug clerk, superintend the construction of a town highway. But in the class-room instruction in government and politics must perforce deal largely with abstractions. The historians, long ago recognizing the vice of unreality which attended them like a ghost that would not be downed, cast about for some new method that would give more firmness and life to their instruction. In their search they came upon the sources, and instead of listening always to the voice of Green or Stubbs, they stopped to hear the voices of the kings, monks, warriors and lawyers who helped to make the history of which Green and Stubbs wrote. The result, as all the world knows, has been marvelous. It has brought more vividness and solidity to historical instruction. It has done more. The very method itself, in the hands of skilled workers, has become a discipline of the highest value. Whoever doubts it should read Professor Fling’s article in the first issue of this magazine. Lawyers likewise have discovered the same difficulties which the teachers of history encountered, and, flinging away Blackstone and the text-books, they have sought refuge in the sources alone. Perhaps they have gone too far with the “case system”; in fact, a reaction seems imminent at this moment; but the commentators will never recover their former sway.
Strange to say, teachers of government and politics have not yet made any widespread use of the methods that have been found so effective in the hands of other students of institutions, and yet in quantity, variety and interest the sources available for their work are practically unlimited. One of the most important groups of materials, the government publications, can be had for the asking; and our waste baskets are filled with the examples of another group, the fugitive literature of party politics. Acres of diamonds have been at our door, but our instruction in government and politics wears, in general, such a barren aspect that keen-sighted students are aware of its unreality and, slow-switted ones find no delight or profit in it. No word in our curriculum suggests such innocuous futility as “civics,” and yet we are preparing citizens for service in a democracy!
But to turn from preachments to some practical advice, which, I take it, is what the editor wanted when he asked me to do this article. The source materials for government and politics fall readily into four groups.
I. There are, first, the autobiographies, memoirs and writings of statesmen, lawyers, legislators, judges, street-cleaning commissioners, police superintendents, and other persons who have actually conducted some branch of our government. These books, it is true, are often written to glorify the authors; but the solemn presentation of the unvarnished truth was not always the purpose of the medieval monk whose chronicle is studied with such zeal as a source. What could be more charming or illuminating than Senator Hoar’s memoirs, Sherman’s recollections, Blaine’s story of his service in Congress, or Benton’s view of things? Were there space at my disposal I could fill this magazine with the topics on which I have secured informing notes from Hoar’s work. There are wit, and humor, and reality on almost every page. I suspect, and whisper it here under breath, that a student who reads it will know more about the Federal Government than one who devotes his time to memorizing the sacred Constitution, so prayerfully drafted by the Fathers.
II. In the second group I would place the government publications, State and Federal and municipal. Now I am aware that this calls up in the minds of many readers visions of the long rows of repulsive volumes which cumber our library shelves, and I know that government reports all look alike to careless observers. They are not, however. Even the “Congressional Record” has pages glistening with information on the inner workings of Congress and the play of interests in lawmaking. It takes some courage for the busy teacher to start on that formidable monument to the capacity of the Government Printing Office, but, as Professor Reinsch has pointed out in the preface to his splendid collection of materials on the Federal Government, the process of studying the sources while irksome at the beginning soon has the exhilarating effect on the mind that brisk physical exercise has on the body. Only one who has turned from a vest-pocket manual of predigested “civics” to the apparently cold and barren waste of the “Congressional Record” can know the exhilaration of the experiment. In the debates of the conventions in which our State Constitutions are framed we can find materials which will illuminate every part of our commonwealth government. Then there are the executive messages and inaugurals—voluminous and forbidding, but even a few hours over them with pen in hand and a plentiful supply of page markers will yield fruit never dreamed of by the teacher who has exhausted his ingenuity on inventing a table that will show graphically what powers are coordinate, exclusive, and reserved in our constitutional system! Then there are the departmental reports; I have a shelf full for the years 1908-09, just in front of my working table. They give a lot of precise information on the state of the civil service, the organization of the army and navy, the work of the Bureau of Corporations, the investigations of the Department of Labor, and the like, which I must have to give correctness and precision to my instruction in matters of State and Federal administration. Then they are indispensable for reference. I am constantly having trouble in remembering whether the pension bureau is a bureau or a division, or is in the War Department, where it would seem to belong, or in the Department of Commerce and Labor, or somewhere else. It really does not matter so much, for doubtless most of our best citizens do not know where it is, especially since, under our system of indirect taxation, they don’t feel its hands in their pockets. Finally, there are Supreme Court decisions. Here laymen must beware, for the lawyers have forbidden us to come in; only one who has mastered the mysteries of real property and torts, so they would have us believe, can understand the mysteries of direct taxation as defined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, we must not take the lawyers too seriously, but we must master the elements of law and also learn how to get the “point” of a case, discover the facts and separate the necessary reasoning from the obiter. Certainly, no student of American government has any business teaching the subject unless he has read and understood many of the greatest decisions of the august tribunal that presides over our political destinies.
III. A third group of materials embraces State and Federal laws. How many readers of this article have ever seen in one spot the yearly output of his State legislature or Congress? How many readers who have discussed Congressional appropriations have ever seen an appropriation bill or part of one? How many readers who have discussed tariff and finance have ever seen a real live tariff bill reposing in the pages of the statutes of the United States? I always take Ash’s edition of the charter of New York City—a portly volume of about a thousand pages—into my class room and perform before the eyes of the students the experiment of running through the chief titles. It helps to keep them modest in their estimate of their knowledge of our city government, and it is a standing apology for the innumerable question which I fail to answer. I may mention, also, in leaving this group, the State election law which can be secured readily from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and should be always in hand.
IV. The fourth group includes the literature of current and party politics, vast, fugitive, here to-day and gone to-morrow, but of an importance never imagined by students who have staked their hopes on understanding our system by a study of “The Federalist.” Party platforms, national, State, and local, campaign text-books, campaign speeches; broadsides, cartoons, posters, and handbills; pamphlets published by partisan and non-partisan associations; interviews in the press; articles in magazines, and a thousand other devices by which political issues are raised and public consciousness aroused, ought to be watched with close scrutiny by the teacher of government faithful to his calling. A collection of ballots should be made showing what the voter has to do on election day, and copies of instructions to voters should be filed away. A hundred other things will be suggested at once to the alert teacher, so that I need not continue the catalogue, but will close the general appeal “Back to the Sources.”
The Recent Revolution in Turkey[2]
BY JOHN HAYNES, PH.D.
For years the history of Turkey was a monotonous tale of domestic disorder and foreign intervention. There was endless turmoil among the warring races and religions of Macedonia, and from time to time some dreadful outrage against the Armenians of Asiatic Turkey. The nations of Europe were constantly seeking reparation for wrongs done to their citizens or urging reforms for the benefit of the Sultan’s Christian subjects. It seemed only a question of time when Turkey would be blotted from the map by the powers of Europe.
Suddenly in July, 1908, it was announced that the constitution of 1876, which was “suspended” after being in force a short time, had been restored. Only the party known as the Young Turks were prepared for such an occurrence. For thirty years they had labored for the overthrow of the misrule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Their headquarters had been in Paris, but since 1904 they had been forming revolutionary organizations in Turkey under a central body called the Committee of Union and Progress. The support of the movement came from the professional classes and from progressive officers in the army, without whose help it could not have succeeded. Some days before the proclamation of the constitution, the Sultan learned of disaffection in the army of European Turkey, and vainly tried to quell it. Then being informed that unless he granted a constitution thirty thousand soldiers would march upon Constantinople, he yielded. A new ministry was formed under Kiamil Pasha, and many of the tools of the Sultan fled the country. In many cities there were extravagant manifestations of rejoicing, in which Moslems and Christians participated together.
The constitution of 1876 is the work of Midhat Pasha, the first Grand Vizier of Abdul Hamid. It provides for personal liberty, freedom of speech and of the press, and equality of Moslems and Christians before the law. The Parliament consists of a Senate, whose members are appointed by the Sultan, and a Chamber of Deputies chosen by the people indirectly through electors. Under this constitution a parliament was chosen and opened in December by the Sultan in person.
For a time all seemed to go well, but Abdul Hamid was plotting for the overthrow of the new régimé which had been forced upon him. The first sign of this was the appointment of two ministers suspected of being hostile to the progressive program. The Chamber of Deputies voted want of confidence in the ministry, and Hilmi Pasha was made Grand Vizier in accordance with the wish of the Young Turks, who thus imposed a new ministry upon the sovereign after the manner of the British House of Commons. But this did not end the matter. For months the Sultan’s money had been corrupting the army, and in April, 1909, the troops in Constantinople mutinied, declaring the Young Turks tyrants. Tewfik Pasha, a reactionary, was put at the head of the ministry. At the same time terrible massacres of Christians, believed to have been inspired by the Sultan, took place in Adana and vicinity.
But this counter-revolution was short-lived. The Macedonian division of the army under Chevket Pasha soon marched upon Constantinople, took the city without serious opposition, occupied the royal palace (Yiediz Kiosk), and made the Sultan a prisoner. Abdul Hamid was formally deposed by decree of the Sheik-ul-Islam, the religious head of the Moslems, and the action was confirmed by the Parliament. A brother, who by Turkish law, was the heir apparent, was chosen in his place, and now rules as Mehmet V. Hilmi Pasha was restored as Grand Vizier. Many participants in the counter revolution were executed. The new Sultan, who was sixty-four at his accession, has lived the secluded life of a political prisoner.
The future of Turkey is almost as much a problem as it was before this remarkable revolution. The Young Turks, who are now in power, stand for internal reform and the integrity of the empire. But they have to face the fact that the great majority of Moslems are reactionary, and that their power is dependent on the support of the army. The people as a whole are not fitted for self-government. One of the charges brought against Abdul Hamid was that the Turkish dominions were dismembered during his reign, but since the revolution of July, 1908, Turkey has lost its nominal sovereignty over Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has also been on the point of losing her small hold on Crete. Though there are Christians in the Parliament and two in the cabinet, the Young Turks do not have the complete co-operation of the Christian population, many of whom will never be satisfied while any of Europe remains under Turkish rule. Besides, their sincerity as protectors of the Christians is doubted. The action of the court martial on the Adana massacres is not satisfactory. Few Moslems have been severely dealt with. Scores of Christian girls, who were carried away as booty during the massacres, have not been returned to their families nor their captors punished. The Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church declares that the Young Turks propose to make the Christians give up their educational institutions and send their children to Turkish schools. The greater part of the foreigners resident at Constantinople, while sympathetic with the new order, are not confident of the future. On the other hand, there are persons thoroughly conversant with Turkish affairs who feel sure that a new day of freedom and progress has really dawned. The future only can tell.