What, in fact, are the principal gaps in old records which affect us moderns? If we take two of the documents which have thrown light on the personal history of Shakespeare (not a matter of much moment to his contemporaries) we shall arrive at a clear distinction between two different kinds of destruction, or shall we say failure to preserve? On the one hand, we have a document signed by Shakespeare as a witness: all that mattered to the court here was that certain evidence had been given by some indifferent person and accepted. Could we have blamed it if it had failed to preserve this signature which we find so intriguing, or had allowed it (as was sometimes done) to be written in by the scribe who took down the deposition? Or if it had preserved the whole document only in the form of a summary? Most certainly we could not: how was the court to know that we should be interested in Shakespeare's life and handwriting? On the other hand, take the case where Shakespeare himself was party to a fine: had the court of Common Pleas failed to preserve the "foot" of that fine, which was a recognised form of evidence of its own transactions, we should legitimately criticise its carelessness.
It appears, therefore, that the only criticism posterity will be able to pass on us, if we adhere to the practice of our ancestors, will be one based on the extent to which we leave record behind us of the work of the various administrations; and our further queries then resolve themselves into two:
(1) Can we train our administrator so to keep his records at the time they are made that they will give a fair picture of the activities of his office, and this without desiring him to do it for the benefit of posterity, without making an historian of him?
(2) Can this be done so economically as to get rid of the bulk difficulty in connection with preservation?
If the answer to each of these questions is "Yes," then our problem is solved.
It is not, of course, possible to answer them in detail here, because to do so would involve inserting a detailed scheme for the keeping of archives in a modern office; it would also involve going into such highly technical, and in some cases controversial, matters as the use and abuse of flimsies, the whole position of the typewriter in record-making (with an excursus on carbons and inks), the comparative merits of various filing systems, and, as regards this country at least, liaison between Government departments. But we may perhaps try in the most general terms to lay down a few first principles and see how far they indicate the possibility of an answer. We may premise that while no two accountants differ radically in their methods, the name of the various filing systems and practices is legion; while we have had double-entry for three or four hundred years, no one has yet hit on a system of filing correspondence and the like which commands general approval; from which we may draw the corollary that almost everywhere there are large redundancies.
If, then, we are to educate our administrator we should begin
(1) By explaining the trouble that has been caused by accumulations of records in the past and the impossibility of dealing with them reliably and satisfactorily in the present. This trouble we require him to prevent in the future by a system of personal attention and studied economy. (He would, of course, say at once that this could not be done; the reply is "Have you tried?")
(2) The next point is concerned also with authenticity, but it is in every way of primary importance.[39]
[39] How important may be judged from the perusal of more than one modern volume of more than one great statesman's "Private Papers"—many of them public records which have been taken out of custody. Perhaps the new diplomacy may do something to remedy this evil.