WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? BY LUCY M. SALMON WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? BY LUCY M. SALMON POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK 1917 -^\b fo^ Copyright, 1917, by Lucy M. Salmon WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? Students of history must to-day find encourage- ment in the generous hospitality everywhere ac- corded the study of this subject. Once regarded as one of the accomplishments to be pursued in fashionable boarding schools and practically ig- nored elsewhere in the educational system, it has now won for itself an assured place and a large and influential clientele. Legislatures are pre- scribing the study of history in the public schools, colleges are requiring it for admission to their courses, newspapers are advocating its study, while ignorance of history is the unpardonable sin in the eyes of the occasional correspondent who writes for the daily press. But all is not peace within the walls of Jerusa- lem. The controversy that was once waged over the desirability of the study of history has now shifted to a consideration of what special field of history should be studied and in this discussion the advocates of the study of modern history are in- sistent in pressing their claims. Of what use, they exclaim, is a knowledge of the Peloponnesian War to a person who can not bound Bulgaria ; what does it avail a man to know correctly the different events in the three Punic Wars if he can not name accurately the generals in the Great War; why should any one profess to understand the relations of Julius Caesar and the Remi if he can not locate WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? the rivers of Rumania; why should any teacher of history not feel qualms of conscience if his stu- dents have an acquaintance with Cincinnatus but have never heard the name of Cavour. Why, in- deed, should any one study yesterday when he is ignorant of to-day, and if he has knowledge of to- day what matters it if he is ignorant of the day- bef ore-yesterday ? Many arguments can be advanced in favor of this position, and the first is its very antiquity. It was Juvenal who nearly two thousand years ago admonished parents to '' impose severe exactions on him that is to teach your boys ; that he be per- fect in the rules of grammar for each word ; read all histories ; know all authors as well as his own finger-ends ; that if questioned at hazard, while on his way to the Thermae or the baths of Phoebus, he should be able to tell the name of Anchises' nurse, and the name and native land of the step- mother of Anchemolus; tell off-hand how many years Acestes lived, how many flagons of wine the Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians. " ^ It was Isi- dore of Seville, as cited by Carlton Huntley Hayes,^ who in the seventh century found that ''History is the story of what has been done, and by its means what has taken place in the past is perceived. It is called in the Greek historia, that is, from seeing (videre) and learning {cognoscere). For among the ancients, no one wrote history unless he had been present and witnessed what was to be de- scribed. For we understand what we see better 1 Juvenal, Satire VII. ^ "Propriety and Value of the Study of Recent History." His- tory Teacher's Magazine, November, 1913. WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? than we do what we gather by hearsay. For what is seen is told without lying. This study belongs to grammar because whatever is worth remember- ing is entrusted to letters." It was Ordericus Vitalis who in the eleventh century professed to write of events that had passed under his own ob- servation, yet began his history with an account of the advent of Christ and gave a fourth of his his- tory to events before his owai era.^ Montaigne, writing in the sixteenth century Of Books, warned his readers that ''The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write, or who have participated in the conduct of them, or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of the same nature. Such are almost all the Greek and Roman historians; for several eye-witnesses having writ of the same sub- ject (as happened in those times, when grandeur and learning frequently met in the same person), if there was an error it must of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a very doubtful accident. What can a man expect from a physician who will undertake to write of war ; or from a mere scholar treating upon the designs of princes?" ^ These are but suggestions showing that at least from the time of Juvenal there has always been a demand that teachers should be primed with the facts of history and that historians should write only of those matters of which they have been 1 "My present object is to treat of what passes under our own observation, or we are called upon to endure." — Preface of Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normanw 2 Works, ed. by W. Hazlitt. II.. 94. WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? personally cognizant. These demands converge to-day, from somewhat opposite directions, on the position that the only history that is worth study- ing is modern history and the only history worth writing is what the historian writes of his times. This opinion can not be lightly dismissed, even though the basic question may seem superficially to belong in the class termed ''purely academic," and to suggest the time-honored query, "Which is mightier, the pen or the sword?" The study of modern history is constantly urged to the exclu- sion of the study of every other period and its supporters count as reactionaries all who differ from them. Yet before this position can be unreservedly ac- cepted and modern history be recognized as enti- tled to the place in the curriculum hitherto held by ancient history, it is necessary to understand what is meant by modern history, what is the basis for the general division of the field into ancient, mediaeval, and modern history, what constitutes value in facts, what therefore leads to the separa- tion of facts into the classes of important and un- important, and finally what is a fact. Modern history has usually been dated from the end of the fifteenth century, — the beginning of a period marked by great inventions and discoveries and by important political changes. Yet a recent important history' pushes forward its beginning by two hundred years, others fix its farthermost boundaries at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury, and to still others it is the term of the past 1 Robinson and Beard. The Development of Modern Europe, 2 vols., 1907. WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? twenty-five or at most fifty years that includes all that is worth knowing in history. In a similar way the boundaries of ancient his- tory have been movable. At one end the anthopol- ogist and the archaeologist have pushed back the confines of history half a million of years/ At the other end the possibility of a more precise chronol- ogy has dated the close of ancient history with cer- tain definite events, as the death of Julius Caesar, the abdication of Diocletian, the accession of Con- stantine, the death of Theodosius, the proclama- tion of Odoacer, or the coronation of Charlemagne. The period assigned to ancient history has there- fore been increased enormously, the field of mod- ern history has by the opposite process been sub- stantially curtailed, while by the simple device of ignoring the intervening period and eliminating what was once known as mediaeval history or tele- scoping it with modern history, the question at issue between the adherents of ancient history and of modern history as to the comparative value of the two fields becomes fairly clear. The question then reverts first to the nature of the historian's surveying tape that measures time. Is chronology so fixed and definite that it can be generally accepted as a satisfactory method of marking time ! It is a time-honored proverb that chronology and geography are the two eyes of his- tory, and chronology would seem therefore a sim- ple matter. . Yet the usually accepted chronology 1 The antiquity of the Piltdown man of Sussex, England, has been estimated at 100,000 to 300,000 years, while that of the Trinil race has been held to be 500,000 years. — H. F. Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 145, 40. WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? is a purely arbitrary division of time and has its own fashions like schools of architecture or paint- ing. Time itself may not vary, but the initial point of departure in marking its flight may be based on the supposed date of creation, on the birth of an individual, from the founding of a city, or the change of residence of a great leader. It is evi- dent that there has been wide divergence of opin- ion as to what should be the point of departure in establishing a system of chronology, that no uni- formity has as yet been attained, that the measure- ments of time now in use conform to the political or religious ideas of individual races or nations, and that any of the present systems must be inade- quate in affording a definite, permanent, univer- sally accepted basis for dividing the past into im- movable periods. It must be equally evident that even in regard to the abstract conception of time itself equal diver- sity exists. Sun time, true time, Greenwich time, Washington time, Western Union time, standard time all indicate the wide range of calculation used by different computers even in a single country like our own. When by the perfection of astro- nomical processes absolute time is ascertained, we feel free to disregard it when occasion demands, — politicians set back the clock on the fourth of March, and daylight is saved by legislative enact- ment. Variations in usage and in measurements may be found in the same organization. In ecclesiasti- cal systems, the advent of Christ is observed on a fixed date, while his death and resurrection are WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? commemorated on movable dates. The true birth- day of the English monarch has not always been observed, but a convenient arbitrary date has been selected and honored. Moreover, when these absolute standards of measurement are supplied, they are often found inadequate to the demands made. When does night end and the day begin, when does the child become a man, and man become old, when was the new world discovered, when did the Reforma- tion begin, when were any great political, relig- ious, industrial or social doctrines first promul- gated! Even a cursory examination of the meth- ods anywhere used in marking time and fixing a definite point of departure for new movements or even for specific events must make it evident that precise measurements of time indicating the frac- tions of a second can be used only in the mechanical competitions of sport or the competitive processes of industry, — they fail to mark the rate of or- ganic growth. Any effort therefore to determine what is ancient history and what is modern history, if based on chronology alone, must be fruitless since the measurements of time are themselves so arbi- trary in their nature and so variable in their ap- plication. It may be said that the establishment of a pre- cise chronology is not essential for the deter- mination of the field of modern history since this necessarily means the study of the world about us. Yet this assumption contravenes the very na- ture of historv. Historv to be history must be the WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? study of developments, and a cross-cut section is not history in any field of knowledge. Nor can it be assumed that all that is recent is in and of it- self important. Nothing is in itself so absolutely ancient as is the fashion of last year, whether it be of food or of clothing, of art or of literature, of politics or of religious creeds. A theological library, a law library, or a medical library becomes obsolete in the lifetime of the individual who has collected it even at large expenditure of time and money. In and of themselves the fashions of the hour have no value, — they acquire importance only as they are brought into relationship with similar conditions of the past. The most minute knowl- edge of the present can have no value until it also is brought into relationship with the past. Nothing again seems so obsolete as do the dis- coveries of yesterday, — they have been superseded by those of to-day as interest in these is already waning before the hope of discoveries to be made to-morrow. Yet to-morrow will be possible only because yesterday has been, — the investigator who hopes that his observations will yield the clue to the cause of a disease that has as yet baffled bac- teriologists ; the chemist who believes that his ex- periments will show how the waste material of a manufacturing process may become a valuable by- product ; the physicist who is confident that he will soon be able to show how latent energy may be made generative; — each and all knows that what he hopes to accomplish in the future will be made possible only through what has already been done 10 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? in the past. Perpetual motion has not yet been discovered nor has iron been transmuted into gold, in part because the initial step in these direc- tions has not yet been taken. The scientist may well say with John Bright, "We are true ancients ; we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, and can see further. ' ' Nor is it science alone that rises on the should- ers of its forefathers. In literature the "best sel- ler" of last year is already discarded and "the great American novel ' ' is yet in the future ; many of the great novels of the nineteenth century are to-day forgotten, and most of those of the eigh- teenth century retain only a so-called academic interest. Yet yesterday's discarded novel makes possible the novel of to-morrow, the principles of literary construction have been deduced from a study of the past, and the individual concrete novel is merged into the general abstract novel. If nothing seems so absolutely important as does to-day's discovery in science, or the book fresh from the press, it is not always because of their in- trinsic merit but because the science and the liter- ature of the day make for the present a connection with the basic past, and become in their turn step- ping-stones for the science and the literature of the morrow. Without this connection they are like the seed that falls on stony ground and withers away because it has no depth of earth. Much therefore in every field of knowledge, if tested by this principle, proves to be ephemeral and without permanent importance. But it is evident on the other hand that much is found on every side that has come down from a re- 11 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? mote antiquity and still lives in the nndiminshed vigor of youth. In literature there is everywhere the persistence not only of primitive types but of the definite indi- viduals who come down from early time. The most modern of novels makes constant reference to **the elemental man ' ' and ' * elemental traits, ' ' — the hero acts as the primitive man would supposedly act and the heroine is " a cave woman. ' ' The novelist looks less forward than back, — "They married and lived happy ever afterward" is no longer the con- ventional ending of a novel. The novelist rather plants his feet firmly on the past and makes con- nection for his characters with the infinite past, not with the finite future of the single life. Pygma- lion, and the Christian martyrs are as much of to-day as they were of the day two thousand years ago. Long ago it was discovered that but thirty- six plots can be used in the construction of the drama or in the novel, — a re-combination, or a new arrangement is alone possible. Greek and Latin dramas are represented on every college stage from Berlin westward to the Pacific, folk dances are the recreation of children on every playground in America, folk songs are everywhere collected and preserved and show the vitality of all that is fundamental in human life. Remove from the language of the day that, with its slang, its new scientific and industrial terminology, seems so "up-to-the-minute," every trace of the past, every work of Greek or Latin, Hebrew or Arabic origin, and it would be difficult for men to communicate with their fellowmen except by sign. The rebus signs found in endless variety on every main street 12 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? in every town in the country are forcible remind- ers of the illiteracy once universal, as the symbols on election ballots to-day are reminders that illit- eracy is still with us. The flying scroll of the medi- aeval monumental brass reappears in the flying scroll that the cartoonist puts into the mouth of the politician of the day. Art as a mode of expression, all the media with which art works, take us back as far as man's history can be traced. Recurring art forms, as the column and the arch, connect the present with a remote past. Building materials,~wood, brick, stone, cement,^ adobe,~are reminders of the age as well as of the modernness of the materials of construction and of the fact that the list has not been lengthened for thousands of years. Recurring art symbols persist, — the shield of Minerva with the portrait of Phidias, the sketch of Charlemagne holding in his hand the model of the cathedral of Aachen, the portraits of donors and their families on early modern religious paint- ings, the Reynolds portrait of Lord Heatherfield with the key of the fortress of Gibraltar in his hand, the illustration of the workman holding a model of the Pennsylvania Railroad station used to announce the opening of the station in 1910, all these indicate the time-old and all but universal desire to associate the maker with the thing made. The discoveries of archaeologists in the Troad, at Mycenae and Tiryns, and at Knossos have had an appreciable influence on the work of goldsmiths and silversmiths, they have fostered an interest in 1 Advertisements in the daily newspapers of the Cement Show in New York in 1910, were illustrated by representations of Roman monuments built with concrete 2,00() years ago. 13 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? pottery, and they have made possible a new and presumably more correct interpretation of myths, legends and traditions, of classical and mediaeval literatures, and they should at least give rise to humility in the mind of the twentieth century man who contemplates the remains of architecture erected two thousand years before Christ. Other discoveries may show the persistence of more sor- did phases of life, — E. C. Jebb intimates that in the fourth century the Ilians did a profitable trade in attracting tourists by their pseudo-Trojan memo- rials,^ while Professor Dana Carleton Munro has recently been writing on The High Cost of Living in the Middle Ages. Art as a means of expression shows in its turn how our indoor amusements and out-of-doors sports have continued from an early date, — run- ning, rowing, racing, boxing, dancing ; ball playing in every form; games of warfare, of agriculture, of every occupation and of idleness ; sports of Cen- tral Italy from the time of Dante to the present year; string games from the most remote times and places to the child of to-day in any school- room ; wrestling from primitive times to the Gras- mere sports; — everywhere recreation and sports show continuity of time and universality of place. The continuity of political interests as well as of political forms and methods of procedure are everywhere in evidence. The celebration of the seven hundredth anniversary of the signing of Magna Charta was made the subject of editorials in no fewer than twenty-eight American newspapers, 1 "Homeric and Hellenic Ilium," Journal of Hellenic Studies. II.. 7-43. 14 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? each citing a different paragraph as having a di- rect bearing on the problems of the day.^ The millenium of King Alfred, the four hundredth an- niversary of the birth of Luther and of Calvin, the tercentenary of Shakespeare and of Cervantes, have awakened widespread interest throughout every nation associated by religious, political, lit- erary, or physical inheritance with the event or person commemorated. The civic oath of the young men of Athens finds its place to-day at the head of the editorial column of a great metropolitan daily, it is repeated by the members of the graduating class of a great civic university, and undergoing a sea change it has be- come the academic oath of other educational in- stitutions. Continuity of legal procedure is found among us in the continuation of English methods on the one hand and on the other hand in the perpetua- tion in Louisiana of the Napoleonic code that in its turn has been derived from the Justinian code. The wealth of anthopological material that has been collected, collated, and interpreted by Sir J. G. Frazer shows how universal and how persistent have been the basic ideas of religion, of the rela- tion of man to nature, of social customs and cere- monies as they have every^vhere been found in corresponding stages of development. With all of our industrial, economic, and com- mercial progress, we find that much that survives is based on the sub-stratum of primitive economic. ^ Boston Evening Transcript, cited by The Editorial, Tune 24, 1915. 15 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? industrial and commercial ideas. Industrial cus- toms of an early time have come down to us in the itinerant seamstress, dressmaker, scissors grind- er, umbrella mender, old rags collector, and vege- table peddler, while the fundamentals in all indus- trial processes are eternal. Fire, whether from flint or the sulphur match, light, whether from the pine knot or the electric current, force, whether from the human arm or the expansion of water, all take us back to the beginning of time. Bread from the fireless cooker is the direct descendant of bread baked in hot ashes. At the Passover Feast the Jewish mother spreads before her family kosher food prepared according to the Mosaic instruc- tions and traditional knowledge, with constant care in the use of utensils in order that the great crisis in a religious history may be fittingly set forth by her husband and son.^ The Indian women grinding grain outside their huts sing praises to the sun and rain. Everywhere the elemental pro- cesses in domestic and industrial life connect the present with a remote past, and thereby gain and retain interest. Even the instruments by which these processes are carried on acquire by associa- tion with them interest and beauty.^ 1 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House,- pp. 242-243. '■^ "In certain primitive and necessary things there lies an ir- resistible appeal. We perceive it in a windmill, a watermill, a threshing-floor, a wine-press, a cottage loom, a spindle, a baking oven, and even in a pitcher, a hearthstone, or a wheel. There we see the eternal necessities of mankind in their ancient, most natural form, and, whether by long association with the satis- faction of some need, or simply by their fitness for utility, they have acquired a peculiar quality of beauty." — Editorial in the London Nation, cited by Eliza Calvert Hall, A Book of Hand- Woven Coverlets, pp. 40-41. 16 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? Barter and pajTiient in kind have come down to us in donation parties and in other gifts of food and clothing made to clergymen, doctors, and the editors of country papers ; in the discounts given ministers by railroads and department stores ; in the free hospitality extended by clergymen to other clergymen; in the free medical attendance given by physicians to other physicians and their families; in the pajmient of the wages of house- hold employers partly in cash and partly in "liv- ing expenses, ' ' and similar payments made teach- ers in boarding schools, and in the payment of in- dustrial employees in orders on company stores. The pa\Tnent of obligations feudal in spirit con- tinues in the gifts to doctors made by grateful pa- tients, in the presents made by contractors to the wives of engineers, in the Christmas gifts made by corporations to employees, in the payment of mar- riage, christening and burial fees, in *'tips" for personal service, in the presents to chairmen of conmiittees, in the flowers given a prima donna and the flowers given public officials on the first day of the transaction of public business. An attempt to revive the political and social relationships that characterized the mediaeval feudal system was made in the seventeenth century in the Valley of the Hudson, in Maryland, and in the Carolinas, but the chain of continuity was broken and the effort failed. The Welsh living on the Welsh tract in Pennsyl- vania experienced as far back as the seventeenth century the difficulties growing out of the ques- tions of the unearned increment and of the moral- 17 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? ity of increasing the valuation of land and conse- quently increasing the taxes when they had them- selves given the increased value through improve- ments they had made. The Hudson Bay Company in its development of the territory bearing its name had to meet and settle the question of strikes and to deal with the subject of the general relations of employer to employees. It is not alone the student of history who exam- ines the past in order to find a firm foundation for the present. The physician studies the physical and mental ancestry of his patients before pre- scribing for them, — the more obscure or compli- cated the disease the farther back he pushes his inquiry before completing his final diagnosis ; life insurance companies examine the physical ances- try as well as the personal physical conditions of applicants for insurance policies before accepting applications; social welfare workers more and more are finding it necessary to understand the social conditions under which the ancestors of the dependent members of society have lived, — the study of The Jukes made by R. L. Dugdale seemed for many years to have little influence, but it has come to be recognized as the very cornerstone of welfare work; investigators in eugenics are find- ing that those who have themselves been well born give the best guarantee that future races will be well born ; criminologists find in the study of an- cestry at least a partial explanation of criminal tendencies. These are but suggestions of the ser- ious efforts made by scientists to understand the 18 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? ancestral conditions of those whose present condi- tions they seek to alleviate.^ In many fields honor and prestige come with in- creasing age. Every great educational institution that can trace its history through unbroken cen- turies thereby gains in honor and influence. Paris and Oxford, Bologna and Padua, Toulouse and Seville owe their educational prestige not alone to equipment and to faculties, but in a measure to their very age. The reverence given to more than one American university grows out of the rever- ence given age as well as respect for educational ideals. At least one great American university has sought to atone for its newness in the eyes of the public by opening its doors with a body of alumni and an emeritus professor adopted from a defunct institution. Social status in an aristocracy founded on birth gains in importance as known ancestry is pro- longed in the past, — the oldest peerage has by very virtue of its age a prestige not accorded those re- cently created. In an aristocracy founded on wealth, the **new rich" are always without the pale. Admission to so-called patriotic orders comes not through personal achievement but through ancestral merits. Other things being equal, all specimens of art and of ancient life gain immeasurably as they are able to show long an- tiquity. 1 It must be understood that this scientific study of the past made by trained investigators is not to be classed with the super- ficial claims of those who demand immunity for physical and moral delinquency on the ground of "inheritance." 19 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? Everywhere the effort is made, often uncon- sciously, to give vitality to the present by connect- ing it with the past. Do we yield to discourage- ment in efforts to improve the conditions of mod- ern life ? We are reminded by the press that two thousand years ago we were told that we should always have the poor with us, that jealousy caused the first recorded murder, that from the time of the Garden of -Eden mankind has tempted, has been tempted, and has yielded to temptation, that in- gratitude has always characterized men, that there have always been wars, that human nature has al- ways been what it is to day and that it will always remain as it now is. These statements may not be accepted at their face value, certainly not as regards the future, yet they are repeatedly made with the thought they will give comfort and en- couragement to those who despair of the present. These illustrations have been given to indicate that much that belongs to the present and that seems of overwhelming importance may quickly prove to be ephemeral. They also indicate that on every hand are found in undiminished vigor insti- tutions and customs that have come down to the present from a remote antiquity. Much more is therefore involved in the question of the nature of modern history than the chronological division into arbitrary periods, and it must follow in its turn that the relative importance of a period must be determined by other considerations than those of time alone. One of these determining factors that indicates the separation of ancient from modern times is the 20 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? question as to how far the present makes connec- tion with the past and contains in itself the ele- ments of the universal. Whatever in art, litera- ture, science, or the deeds of men, represents but the fleeting fashion of the hour is destined to van- ish into thin air, but whatever has come down from an early period and still flourishes in the vigor of undimmed youth is a part of the universal heritage of the ages. It is correspondingly true that whatever is ar- tificial in its origin quickly loses its individuality and becomes a part of an undistinguishable whole. If the art of Thorwaldsen to-day seems artificial it is not because he chose his subjects from the mythology and history of Greece and Rome, but because he missed the appreciation of what made classical art vital, — his art became an imitation of the external forms of classical art rather than an outgrowth of his own Scandinavian soil. Had he turned to Scandinavian mythology and history and expressed its spirit in forms of art, he would have ranked among the greatest. It is fitting and char- acteristic that his works have been collected in a mausoleum of Egyptian design. If the great pre- raphaelites are already passing into obscurity, it is because they sought a revival of form and spirit not of their own time, — not that they chose as they did but that they did not chose other than they did, not that they depicted other times and other events, but that these times and events did not bear transplanting from their natural habitat to an artificial environment. Thus it must be seen that while fashion is fleet- ing, the spirit of the universal is permanent ; ideas 21 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? transplanted from other soils may be set out on stony ground and wither away, but seed on good ground bears forth abundantly; the artificial is always ephemeral, but the natural is perpetual. Survival, continuity, and the universal alone deter- mine the importance of a period, — its importance is not gauged by the element of abstract time. A still further consideration must be noted. As every community, every family has its membership made up of different ages, and community age is altogether different from individual age, so mod- ern history begins at different times in different countries. The stone age is still found in more than one locality, and from the point of view of its own development and measured by chronology its history must be denoted as modern. Yet elsewhere the stone age, measured by its development into a more complex civilization, becomes the earliest record for the study of pre-historic Europe. Prim- itive man, the troglodyte, and the cliff dweller wherever found in the present age do not become a part of that age by reason of their presence in it, but remain an object of scientific observation and study to the anthopologist, the ethnologist, and their confrere the historian. The interest in primitive man is not intrinsic, but it depends for its vitality on the connection that is made between primitive man and modern man. A cross-cut sec- tion of the past as well as of the present shows human life in all stages of development, but only as these cross-cut sections are compared and uni- fied do we find that development called history. The attempt has been made to show how ex- tremely diflficult, nay how impossible, it is to divide 22 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? the field of history by arbitrary chronological divi- sion and how misleading in their application to history are the designations ** ancient," ''medi- aeval," and ''modern." All is modern that sur- vives, all is ancient that has perished; age must always be a relative, not an absolute term. What- ever in literature or art or science contains ele- ments of the universal survives, while all that be- longs simply to the hour quickly loses its individu- ality and becomes a part of an undistinguishable whole. What survives survives because it has in itself the elements of the universal, because it is an outgrowth of previous conditions, because it has a continuity with all that has gone before, because it is natural and normal rather than artificial and eccentric. How then shall we meet the demand for the study of modern history to the exclusion of all other fields, how answ^er the plea that is made that the study of modern history is necessary in order that it may furnish "tens and hundreds of thou- sands of boys and girls, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of our restless environment" "what the memory of a live, alert mind of the twentieth cen- tury is likely to demand." May it be said in the first place that the demand for the study of modern history seems but the symptom of a condition of society that has lived in the present, whose interests have been those of the moment, — a pleasure-loving age devoted to the au- tomobile, the moving picture, a spring in Florida, a summer in the Rockies, an autumn in the Berk- shires and a winter in a New York apartment. 23 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? It must also be said that much that masquerades to-day as modern history is but a miscellaneous collection of current events, or the descriptions of other lands by the facile pens of hurrying travel- lers. These are but cross-cut sections of life that is concerned with the present moment. History to be history must ever through an evolutionary process reconstruct the life of the past. The study of the past and of the present are not antagonistic, but are ever complementary. Again it must be noted that while it is easy to condemn as old-fashioned the study and writing of so-called ancient history, yet this is in truth the most modern history, while, as has been seen, it is old-fashioned to study modern history. It is in the field of so-called ancient history that the most important discoveries of new material are being made, — every turn of the archaeologist's spade brings to light new sources of information in re- gard to the life of former times. This new mate- rial makes possible for the historian new points of view, new comparisons, new interpretations. His- tory was once of one dimension, it now has three dimensions; it was long written in the flat, it is now written in the round ; it was once a narrative of the marshal deeds of great heroes, it is now a study and interpretation of past life. Many his- tories of the ancient world are, it is true, now abso- lutely worthless, but equally worthless are an equal numl3er of histories of America and of modern Europe. A History of the Great War was an- nounced soon after the opening of the war, and it is now coming from the press ; it is to be completed in five volumes, apparently without reference to the 24 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? length of the war, and three volumes are already published. Many histories regardless of the period covered are alike without value because new con- ceptions of the meaning of history have come to historians, as these will in turn be supplanted by the conceptions of the future. The study of ancient history has lost none of its importance or interest, even though many histories of ancient times have been thrown to the discard where, it must be re- membered, they have been followed by many his- tories of modern times. It can not be repeated with too great emphasis that in weighing the merits of different fields of history as a subject of study the element of time in and of itself is the least im- portant. But while ancient history has changed with ref- erence to its content, the scene of the events of ancient history and of ancient life has remained stationary. The events of the Great War and its immediate predecessors have taken place where nearly two thousand years ago the great battles of the world were fought and the great campaigns carried on. Julius Caesar's Commentaries have formed the text-book on strategy for officers in the French army on the Aisne, and the world reverts again to his division of Gaul and its inhabitants and his characterization of the Belgians as the bravest of them all. In the Near East the old bat- tlefields of Greek and Trojan, Greek and Persian, Greek and Greek are still the scene of military cam- paigns; classical myths, classical poetry and drama, all live in perennial youth where time-old enemies are to-day once more engaged in mortal combat. In the Far "West of Europe, Bath is to- 25 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? day used as a ''soldiers spa" as it was during the Roman occupation of Britain. At every turn we are reminded not only that ' ' the eternal human in Greek cannot die,"^ even 'though "it is only by slow degrees that the modern world has learned how much is left of ancient Athens, ' ' ^ but we are also learning, though slowly, that all nations share with Greece, though in varying degrees, in this ele- ment of the eternal. The very pursuit of the study of ancient history has led to the discovery of the slender basis of fact on which the traditional history of Rome rested, and to a reconsideration of all the laws of evidence on which history has been written. Much that is best in the present method of writing modern his- tory has been developed through a study of ancient history and the classical languages; their study could be discontinued only to the impairment of our knowledge of the present and to the loss of tools necessary to an understanding of it.^ A decision therefore in regard to the relative im- portance of the fields of ancient and of modern his- tory can only be reached, if reached at all, by real- izing that much that seems of importance at the moment proves ultimately to have been ephemeral, 1 B. L. Gildersleeve, The Nation, ]\.\\y 8. 1915. 2 Percy Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, p. 231. ^A recent editorial deals with the subject "in lighter vein" and closes with the hopeful forecast : "Our professor of classic philology at Weissnichtwo, being only human, is not inaccessible to certain twinges of self-interest. He has read that the Balkan War is to have an effect on woman's fashions ; the Parisian dressmakers have decreed the revival of the military style in walking gowns. Our professor finds himself wondering whether the Balkan War will not have its effect on college fashions, whether a revival of interest in that classic world which is so real to him is not among the possibilities of the time."— The Evening Post (N. Y.), March 10, 1913. 26 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? that much survives in the full vigor of youth that has been developed from apparently trivial begin- nings, that the significance of many events and conditions can not be gauged by the element of abstract time, and that continuity and survival are the chief factors in determining what is important. In a very true sense it may be said that ''there is no modern history because all modern history is something else. ' ' A scholium may perhaps be added. Analogies are always dangerous, but at the risk of making a false one it may be suggested that turbulent seas are weathered not by the light barks made from the saplings of a few years' growth, but by the hea^^" steamers into whose construction has gone material that has been preparing from the begin- ning of the world and that have required long- years of skilled workmanship for their perfect completion. Protection from cyclones is sought, not on the public streets, but in cellars dug deep into the earth. Warfare is carried on not with raw recruits but with men who have undergone long and arduous training. Even a partial understand- ing of what lies about us can come only through long and thorough acquaintance with history as it has been developed from a remote past. Much discussion has been given by students of history to the relative advantages of ancient and of modern history as fields of study, but there has apparently been unanimous assent given to the as- sumption that only the "important facts" of his- tory should be taught, even though this statement carries with it the germs of the fundamental ques- tion at issue. But a closer analysis of the situation 27 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? shows that the appearance of unanimity is decep- tive. It must be self-evident that the facts of the past are as numerous as are the sands of the sea, that in and of themselves they have no stable or in- trinsic value, that their sole importance comes from their combination and re-combination with other facts, that a fact may have no value in com- bination with one group of facts and may have su- preme value in combination with a different group of facts, and that an endless succession of combina- tions and re-combinations of kaleidoscopic variety is not only possible but inevitable in all descrip- tions of the present. ''Every fact," says Steven- son, ''is a part of that great puzzle we must set to- gether; and none that comes directly in a writer's path but has some nice relations, unperceivable by him, to the totality and bearing of the subject un- der hand. '" The student and the writer of history accept the statement of the man of letters, — they know that all facts are chameleon-like in their na- ture, without worth at one time and in one relation, of great worth at other times and in other rela- tions. The fact that a person was born in one year or another is rarely of special importance and the variation of a few years apparently affects little, even his own personal history, but it is of great im- portance to ascertain definitely the fact when Co- lumbus was born since on the determination of the exact year depends the decision of the question as to how much knowledge it was possible for him to 1 "The Morality of the Profession of Letters," Fortnightly Re- viezv, April, 1881, and in Essays of Travel and in the Art of Writing, p. 294. 28 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? have of the voyages of previous discoverers. The determination of the exact year of the birth of Co- lumbus is important when taken in connection with other facts relating to the history of discovery, its relation to the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands is remote, and its inter-relation with the history of Tammany Hall, for example, entirely negligible. The facts concerned in the excommunication of Luther from the Church of Rome are of great im- portance when taken in connection with other facts connected with the history both of Protestantism and of Roman Catholicism ; they are indirectly of importance in the consideration of political ques- tions that later arose in England, they have no ap- parent weight in the history of church or State in Russia. It is impossible to deal only with the ''important facts ' ' of history since all facts may be at one time or another of great importance or of no import- ance. The prescription ''teach the facts" is also less simple than it seems. The great problem for the historian is not only to determine what are the facts but also to decide what is to be considered a fact. It is a fact that many have believed that the sole cause of the American Revolution was taxa- tion without representation, but it may also be a fact that it was not the sole cause ; it is a fact that many have believed in the divine right of kings to rule, but it is also a fact that many have questioned this ; it is possibly not a fact that kings do rule by divine right. The determination both of what the concrete facts have been and of what constitutes an abstract fact becomes a difficult problem. 29 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? It seems therefore but a juggling with words to say that we must concern ourselves only with the facts of history. The great problem for the his- torian is to determine not only what the facts are but also what is a fact. Little has been said in regard to the method of dealing with the period selected, yet it can not go without question that this is immaterial. The terms ''modern history" and ''ancient history" may apply both to the material of history and to the method of dealing with it. Ancient history, in view of the discovery of new material and newer methods of dealing with it, presents far more that is novel than does any other period, as much that seems new and modern to-day will quickly go the way of last year's fashions in art and literature, food and clothing. Nothing is more true than a recent statement in a recent newspaper — that new- est of adaptations of the oldest of ideas — that ' ' search for the obsolete yields more than novelty. Not the least of its results is a new comprehension of the modern. ' ' ^ The long sweep of time included in the field denominated ancient history adapts it to one nature of treatment, the very restricted term called modern history demands an entirely different treatment. Both may be examined with the minute care of the paleographer and the epi- graphist, if the worker in the field is mature and is master of his tools. But the immature student needs the long sweep, the vision of the whole hori- zon, — this is for the novice and the beginner as well as for the master, but the cross-cut section for the master workman alone. 1 "Novelty and the New," The Evening Post (N. Y.), Janu- ary 21, 1910. 30 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? It is therefore not so much the period covered or the subjects considered that give an historical work intrinsic importance ; its value rather rests on the method with which the records are collected, verified, tested, collated, and interpreted. Does the question then of modern history in all its ramifications not resolve itself into a statement of Stevenson 's, ' ' History is much decried ; it is a tissue of errors, we are told no doubt correctly; and rival historians expose each other's blunders with gratification. Yet the worst historian has a clearer view of the period he studies than the best of us can hope to form of that in w^hich we live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experi- ence ; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insid- ious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas con- tinually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable course ; the political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible degrees, like a traveling glacier, carrying on its bosom not only political parties but their flag-posts and cantonments ; so that what ap- pears to be an eternal city founded on hills is but a flying island of Laputa. ' ' ^ The truth of these observations of Stevenson's is confirmed by the experience of each one of us. The presidential election campaigns are few in which even the most intelligent persons understand what is going on about them, — they prefer to prophesy after rather than before the election re- turns are counted. Probably at no time in the 1 R. L. Stevenson, "The Day After To-Morrovv," in Essays of Travel and in the Art of Writing, p. 302. 31 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? world has so much material been available for the study of a contemporaneous period as is available for the study of the present war, at no time have so many intelligent minds been actively at work to determine its causes and to understand its politi- cal, military, economic, industrial and social bear- ings, never before, in spite of the most rigorous censorship ever known in countries where freedom of the press has hitherto prevailed, has it been so possible to gauge public opinion in regard to war, yet who of us will dare say whither we are drifting? This discussion of what is modern history has, it is hoped, made it clear that many fallacies are connected with the question. One is that there is a fixed chronology that has an ever increasing value as it approaches the present day. Another is the assumption that there is a consensus of opin- ion as to what is meant by modern history, and still another that facts have in and of themselves a definite fixed value. The practical application of the discussion of the subject must be that it at least does not go without saying that all are hopeless reactionaries who question the wisdom of substituting modern history for ancient history in the school and col- lege curriculum. Nothing is so simple as to con- demn by ridicule. It is easy to heap jeers on the teacher who slavishly follows the text in studying the Peloponnesian wars and requires from a class the correct dates of the Samnite wars, but it is a non-sequitur that the same teacher would find the Great War any more inspiring or teach it any more successfully. If an acquaintance with the history of Rome is suggested, the objection is triumphant- 32 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? ly advanced, ''But what is the use of knowing about the Samnite wars ! ' ' There is indeed little use that can be discovered to-day in studying the Samnite wars, but to consider these controversies synonymous with the history of Rome is parallel mth considering the border warfare carried on in America from the settlement of Jamestown to the recent troubles with Mexico as comprehending the history of this country ; the study of border war- fare is as valid an objection in one case as in the other to the study of the country as a whole. It is easy to set up standards of perfection and to condemn all who do not attain unto them. Noth- ing is so easy as to find the bottomless pits of ig- norance into which college freshmen, college sen- iors, college professors fall when facts of modern history and modern geography are presented to them. Ancient history is indeed forgotten, but no more quickly forgotten than is modern history, — both alike vanish into thin air if they are not ac- tively in use. How does the question of what is modern his- tory concern itself with the new internationalism? The question can be answered only by asking other questions. How can we deal with the problem of the for- eigner in our midst unless we know the history of the lands from which he has come? How can we understand the great questions of emigration and immigration unless we know that man has always been a migratory animal, that he has always "moved on" in search of real or fan- cied improvement in his condition, that wanderlust in default of other reasons explains his restless 33 WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? movements. How can we deal with the melting pot in America unless we know that races have always mingled and intermingled through con- quest, through intermarriage, through commerce, through exchange of industrial workers, through financial operations, through every reason known to the human mind, and that from the beginning of time purity of the human race has never existed? How can we prepare for a new internationalism unless we have learned how much the nations have had in common from the childhood of the races until the present? How can we understand the national antipathies of the present unless we know that as far back as we can trace human history the Rhine Valley has been the bone of contention between the tribes and nations whose farther progress has been halted by the great river, unless we realize that warring races have ever made a cockpit of Southeastern Europe? Much of the hatred that has come to the surface in the present war has in reality been deep-seated and of long duration; it has been engendered in every nation, in varying degrees, by systems of education that have used the study of history to inculcate a false, narrow and pernicious patriot- ism. Is it open to America by a deeper, more thor- ough study of the long past to get the point of view of other nations and thus to lead in a new interna- tionalism based on the knowledge that in the last analysis the human race is one in its hopes, aspira- tions, and ideals ? 34 LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 018 485 091 6 •