I

DURING the fifty years in which I have had the good

to an observer of these things, the countries which have played the chief part in colouring the educational outlook of thinking people everywhere are the United States and Germany. The achievements of American citizens in the Near East and in China have been effective in extending the influence of the United States, while the educational contributions of Germany include what came from Austria and (to a limited degree) from German-speaking Switzerland. Of the other countries which exerted world-wide educational influence, France no longer showed the dynamic which distinguished her from the days of Port Royal to the sunset of the Revolution, though the masterpieces of her painters had unrivalled power over the eye of mind. In the field of educational policy the English were collectively the most hesitant, though not the least well-meaning. Millenarian influence for nearly two decades after the last war had its chief crater in Soviet Russia. The Germans were kind and very painstaking, though some of them got feverish and even minatory. Of all nations the Americans advanced on the widest front. They welcomed new ideas; showed unflagging energy; scrapped what they judged obsolete; and promptly backed experimental enterprise out of taxes or from private liberality. Broadly speaking, and notwithstanding tragic retrogression in Central Europe, the most pervasive influence in world-education at this juncture is American.

Hosts of British men and women, in the course of their thoughts about education, have felt the thrill of American influence. It braced them when they were baffled. It cheered them when they were discouraged. They liked its hospitality. Its energy, many-sidedness, and large-hearted optimism were tonic. America looks towards the futureand to what the future may bring.

But in welcoming what is American, the British did not lose the idiosyncrasies of their own educational past. And among the British, the English experienced the subtlest reactions. Folk-memories of old disputes made them distrust any over-simplification of the fundamental problem which lies athwart any thorough-going policy in national education, viz. the awkward fact that an education which does its complete work belongs both to God and to Caesar. Secondly, the English still find it hard to think themselves free from the three-layer (but not impermeable) stratification of their society, with its educational habits adjusted to the spending-power and ways of life prevalent in each layer. Thirdly, different groups in the English community, now as in the seventeenth century, incline temperamentally to converse systems of social governance. One of the two submits itself not unreadily to collective control of morals and congregational order, provided that economic individualism is allowed. The other is not indisposed to submit to a rather mild sort of economic collectivism, provided that the law and the police allow a good deal of liberty to individuals in affairs of the heart and in private interpretation of religious duty.

II

Benjamin Franklin was the first American to cheer us up in our Sunday-go-to-meeting moods about education. He knew how to electrize a person twenty times running with a touch of the finger on the wire'. And any English educationist, who feels that he is

wandering between two worlds, one dead,
the other powerless to be born',

is the better for cocktails shaken by Poor Richard, or by Mr. Dooley, or in 'The Education of Hyman Caplan '.

Medicinally the libertarianism of President Charles Eliot's elective system' was an alterative to the calvinism of the German doctrine of Allgemeine Bildung, which appealed rather dangerously at one time to a few English administrators including R. B. Haldane. But the American therapy which has done most for us is electrical. Most of the current that unstiffened our joints came direct to England, e.g. from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, from William James, and from John Dewey's School and Society. But sometimes it was generated in Pestalozzian Germany and relayed to Britain from somewhere in the United States. Who, for example, lifted the ban on Comenius? Readers will remember that in 1661 his fame in England as a pansophic pioneer in school-planning (a forerunner of Mr. H. G. Wells in some of his moods of prophecy) was suddenly eclipsed. His school-books (bright, astringent fruit from what he ruefully called spinosa didactica") kept some of their vogue. But the Comenius, of whom Milton had written respectfully seventeen years before, suddenly became unmentionable in London, and, so far as most English readers were concerned, passed into oblivion for two centuries. Robert Owen, who was a kindred spirit, published The Book of the New Moral World in 1836, evidently without having any knowledge of Comenius. in 1842 a professor of mineralogy in the University of Erlangen, Karl von Raumer, published in his Geschichte der Pädagogik an admirable and moving chapter on the great Moravian's vision of the future in education. To this book the alert and watchful Henry Barnard (afterwards the first U.S. Commissioner of Education) drew the attention of the readers of his American Journal of Education. Here it caught the eye of a Harrow master, R. H. Quick, who wrote Essays on Educational Reformers and rightly dedicated it to Henry Barnard. Quick's book, especially the second edition which appeared in 1868, was a torch alight. For English readers, the occultation of Comenius ended. Simon Laurie and M. W. Keating (both writing in Edinburgh) made him swim like a planet into the English ken and in recent years R. F. Young's scholarship has scrutinized his place in the orrery. For the beginnings of the revival of his fame in England a debt is due to the American Henry Barnard and, at a critical time in the struggle for better schools for the people, English educationists, like James Fraser, got from the influence of Horace Mann an electric shock of encouragement and hope.

III

But

From public libraries in America the English learnt to ask for a less austere economy in staffing and equipment. Those of us who knew New York State forty years ago have lively memories of the galvanic Melvil Dewey. Open access to the shelves in some of the American university libraries is gratefully remembered by English scholars who have profited by them, and every lover of S. T. Coleridge is under obligation to Harvard College library for the large freedom' which it gave to John Livingston Lowes. In the sphere of adult education, Dr. Paton's report on Bishop Vincent's Chatauqua encouraged us to venture on the first Oxford Summer Meeting in the early nineties. As regards the printed page, we are under heavy obligation of which only a hint can be given here. The British educationist will not forget what he owes to the generously distributed reports of the Bureau of Education in Washington (a series which in 1895 reinforced Arthur Acland's determination to get a Department of Special Inquiries and Reports set up in the English Education Office); and to the beloved W. T. Harris and others who have followed him in the Commissioner's office; to Paul Monroe, E. P. Cubberley, and I. L. Kandel for studies in the history and national

idiosyncrasies of education; to Stanley Hall's Adolescence; to Nicholas Murray Butler from the days of his editorship of the Educational Review onwards; to the reports of the Mosely Commissioners and to Helen Parkhurst's Dalton Plan; to E. L. Thorndike, C. H. Judd, Abraham Flexner, and President Hutchins of Chicago; to the blue-grey booklets of H. W. Holmes and President Conant of Harvard; to the Lynds for both instalments of Middletown; to Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and many other living novelists, as well as of course to Louisa M. Alcott and Henry James.

In far-off days President Walker and James Phinney Munroe taught a young Englishman much about the relations between an institute of technology and an adjacent university. Munroe took him to a town's meeting in Massachusetts which was a sadly etiolated survival of Puritan local government, but the opposite number to the Court of the Virginia Company with its Cavalier instructions about education. In America, Cavalier and Puritan ideals of public duty towards popular education were kept geographically at a distance from one another down the Atlantic seaboard. But an Englishman knows only too well what deadlocks persist when both plants grow side by side in the same pot. Inspiring to one who revered General Armstrong was Hampton Institute under Dr. Frissell, and the welcome given by Booker Washington to Tuskegee. W. E. B. Du Bois' poignant Souls of Black Folk had its message for an Englishman who, years later, served on the Advisory Committee on Education set up by the Colonial Office in London. But by that time Dr. Wallace Buttrick and the General Education Board had got far forward with their great work; the Rosenwald schools and the Jeanes Fund and other agencies were active; and the PhelpsStokes Fund had sent out under the magnetic leadership of Thomas Jesse Jones the expeditions which surveyed educational policies in West and East Africa.

Nothing in England, as yet, except Rhodes Trust and the Nuffield benefactions, can be compared with the guided munificence of the great American foundations. The Rockefeller Trustees thrilled us by making possible the building of the new University Library at Cambridge and of the new Bodleian at Oxford. Under Dr. Keppel's guidance, the Carnegie Foundation has made it possible for Philip Hartog and his colleagues to probe into the bindweed of examinations which half-chokes some of the teaching in many of our secondary schools but cannot ruthlessly be torn away without leaving room for a worse pest. These however are but two of many benefactions for which, as for Mr. Harkness' Pilgrim Trust, Britain is thankful. And all who have been concerned with the financial administration of our newer universities, or yearn for a more civilized standard in the buildings and appurtenances of many English primary schools, know that American example exerts a deepening influence towards better things, just as the swift growth of public high schools which began in the United States in 1890 proved a powerful incentive to the establishment of new secondary schools in England half a generation later. And, though Britain still has no counterpart to Teachers College, Columbia University, with its international service and prestige, every training college in England, including the departments in the universities, has felt the stimulus of American study and experience, and the Institute of Education in the University of London bids fair to grow into a big and fruitful tree.

To one English student who cherishes bright memories of educational journeys made during the last fifty years, America seems still to beckon a welcome. The French tradition in education fascinates him, but (except in the writings of Felix Pécaut and Jean Delvolvé) seems short of a vitamin in what (till Vichy) could be called her official educational policy. Germany was radiant with personal memories of Friedrich Paulsen, Wilhelm Rein, Reinhardt of the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfort, and Georg

Kerschensteiner chortling at his 'Indianer-schmuck' after an official reception in Munich. But in the background in Prussia (and not only in Prussia) a lurking danger frightened him.

He hopes it is not unseemly to recall a personal experience. His friend Max Walter had asked him to speak at the Neuphilologentag in Frankfurt and the subject chosen for his address was England's debt to German Education . The great hall was filled by a massive audience of professors from all over German-speaking Europe. They listened to him with attention and purred approval. But, when he had got to the end of his manuscript, he felt that he had told only half the truth and extemporized an appendix. In this he tried to explain why England had not followed Germany in all her educational policy and said that the English took a different view of the ultimate authority of the State. When they heard this, the company growled like a tiger.

But it is wise for a student of systems of education to keep in mind what the Delphic Oracle said: "Think Good of other men, and not Evil. BUT KNOW THYSELF".

ОH, Jonathan, dear Jonathan! a wretched world we see ; There's scarce a freeman in it now, excepting you and me. In soldier-ridden Christendom the sceptre is the sword; The statutes of the nation from the cannon's mouth are roared.

Ordnance the subject multitude for ordinance obey;
The bullet and the bayonet debate at once allay :
The mouth is gagg'd, the Press is stopp'd, and we remain
alone

With power our thoughts to utter, or to call our souls our

own.

They hate us, brother Jonathan, those tyrants; they detest
The island sons of liberty and freemen of the West;
It angers them that we survive their savage will to stem,
A sign of hope unto their slaves-a sign of fear to them.
Reproduced by permission of the proprietors of Punch.
(Punch, January 10, 1852, page 13.)

WHAT if our numbers barely could defy
The arithmetic of babes, must foreign hordes,
Slaves, vile as ever were befooled by words,
Striking through English breasts the anarchy
Of Terror, bear us to the ground, and tie
Our hands behind our backs with felon cords?
Yields every thing to discipline of swords?
Is man as good as man, none low, none high ?—
Nor discipline nor valour can withstand
The shock, nor quell the inevitable rout,
When in some great extremity breaks out
A people, on their own beloved Land
Risen, like one man, to combat in the sight
Of a just God for liberty and right.

WORDSWORTH. Published 1837.

DISRAELI wrote in 1840, at the outset of his political career: Hitherto we have been preserved from the effects of the folly of modern legislation by the wisdom of our ancient manners. The national character may yet save the Empire. The national character is more important than the Great Charter or trial by jury." On the dusty roads from Mons to Marne river, in the blood-stained agony of Somme and Passchendaele, on Dunkirk Beach and in the skies above the Channel, the truth of that century-old prediction became clear.

ARTHUR BRYANT, English Saga.

IN

N July, 1941, the Board of Education issued a Memorandum on the teaching of the History of the United States. Official recognition has, therefore, been given to the need for the study of American History in British schools. In this article an attempt will be made to consider some of the books that are now available for this new departure in English education. Particular attention will be paid to those books that are now in print, though reference will be made to others which can probably be obtained from county or borough libraries. It may be assumed that books of which no details are given are out of print.

It is

There is naturally a scarcity of text-books for this branch of historical study, though the demand will doubtless call forth the supply. Perhaps the most useful at the moment is Cecil Chesterton's History of the United States. This is a provocative book, often wrong-headed and inaccurate, but it was written by an enthusiast; it is very readable, and it covers the ground without succumbing to any of the ordinary weaknesses of text-book histories. It should certainly be read only in the edition prepared by Professor D. W. Brogan (Dent, Everyman Library, 1940, 3s.), who has provided footnotes which will steer the reader through the author's various errors of fact and judgment. Mention may be made of two histories which are typical of the two main categories into which most historical text-books seem to fall. An American History, by Professor D. S. Muzzey (Ginn & Co., 1929, 9s. 6d.) is an example of the more old-fashioned kind, divided into numbered paragraphs, each with its own appropriate heading. thorough and, for a text-book, remarkably complete, though stronger on the political than on the social or economic aspects. A Short History of America, by J. E. Tyler (W. & R. Chambers, Ltd., 1940, 6s.) is written as a consecutive narrative and is certainly more readable. It, too, may be said to pay almost undue attention to the political story. The author is liable, as an act of piety, to refer to some well-known incident in American history, forgetting that for an English reader a mere reference may be quite meaningless. For instance, phrases such as a debate in the Senate, in which Daniel Webster with tremendous eloquence preached the doctrine of indissoluble union", or it was because of his famous 'cross of gold' speech in this Convention that the nomination eventually fell to Bryan", are of no value to a student who has never heard of Webster's reply to Hayne or of W. J. Bryan's speech at Chicago. The point is of some importance. It is essential that British pupils should be taught something of the "folk-lore" of American history, those famous incidents which have been seized upon unconsciously by the people as somehow typical of the forces that made their destiny. The Making of American Civilization, by C. A. and Mary Beard (Macmillan, 1937, 12s. 6d.) is written by two of the greatest modern American historians. It was intended for use in schools, but, although it is often fresh and stimulating, it is not altogether satisfactory for this purpose. A stricter adherence to the chronological sequence is essential in a text-book, and it is likely to confuse a beginner at the subject to find, for example, Tom Paine's Common Sense dealt with after The Crisis.

The first need felt by a teacher will naturally be for some fairly detailed history of the United States, on the accuracy and good judgment of which he can rely, to serve as a framework for his own studies. Fortunately such a book exists for British readers in Professor S. G. Morison's The Oxford History of the United States, 1783-1917 (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 1927, 32s. net). This is an admirable survey, and it will make known to him the main fruits of recent American historical studies. It is most successful, perhaps, in treating the progress of American political

development. There are excellent chapters on the United States before the Civil War and on the struggle itself. It is considerably more than a text-book; the author possessed a remarkable power of relevant quotation, which does much to enliven the work, and he had also a singularly balanced point of view, which did not preclude him from delivering strong criticisms at times. The same publishers have produced in the United States an extension of this work by Professor S. E. Morison and Professor H. S. Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, 1763-1936 (two volumes, 1937, 25s. net. Vol. I, 12s. 6d. net. Vol. II, 155. net.) Besides dealing with the War of Independence and the period during and after America's participation in the last war, this book is considerably fuller on the social and economic development of the country since the Civil War. The chapters in the second volume on the Passing of the Frontier, Transport, Labour, Agriculture, the Economic Revolution, and Immigration are very vivid and, though intended primarily for the American student, should be none the less useful in this country. The Oxford Dictionary of American History (six volumes, Oxford University Press, 1941, £17 net) is one of those publications which lighten the work of any teacher or student. A great number of subjects are dealt with severally in short articles by American scholars. As a work of reference, to supplement ordinary reading by bringing easily to hand the results of recent research, it would be invaluable, and any school library which possessed this great work of reference would be fortunate indeed.

Few writers have done more to introduce`new points of view into American history than Charles and Mary Beard. Their various works on particular subjects are not easily obtainable in this country, but their views are conveniently summarized in their book, the Rise of American Civilization (two volumes, Jonathan Cape, 1927, 18s. net). Of special value are the chapters dealing with the founding of the Constitution, expounding the economic forces then at work, on the rivalry between Jefferson and Hamilton, and, above all, that in the second volume on "The Second American Revolution". No one who reads this chapter is ever likely again to make the mistake of thinking that the Civil War was fought simply on the issues of Slavery and the preservation of the Union.

J. T.

H. V.

A few other recent histories may be mentioned. Adams' A History of the American People (Vol. I, to the Civil War, Vol. II, From Civil War to World Power), though not as stimulating as his Epic of America, to be considered later, and not so full or scholarly as Professor Morison's work, is very readable and thoroughly sensible. It contains a brilliant choice of illustrations. Faulkner's A Short History of the American People (George Allen & Unwin, 1938, 18s.) is certainly one of the best one-volume histories. It is particularly useful on the economic aspect, and the point of view of the author may be seen from the title of the chapter dealing with the fighting in the Civil War, Clash of Economic Sections". W. E. Woodward's A New American History (Faber & Faber, 1938, 12s. 6d.) is vivacious and sometimes rather too smart. The author's point of view may be seen from this quotation : The Southern planter was a romantic person and full of buncombe, like the abolitionists and nearly every one else". The American Presidents, by Herbert Agar, a famous American journalist, takes up a more earnest standpoint, though it is occasionally rather gossiping. It is the kind of book which should certainly be in a school library to stimulate a boy or girl who had begun to be interested in American history.

"

Perhaps the most important single piece of work on American history was F. J. Turner's essay on The Signi

ficance of the Frontier in American History, which has not been published in this country. It stimulated a remarkable amount of research on this problem and its effect is noticeable in almost all subsequent histories. Professor S. E. Morison's Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (Oxford University Press, 1923, 10s. 6d. net) contains an introduction which brings out clearly the influence of frontier problems on the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies, an aspect of the subject largely neglected by the traditional English historians. But the British reader will find his best introduction to the school of American historians, who have seen in the expansion through and the development of their continent the real interest of their national story, to be J. T. Adams' The Epic of America (Routledge, 1940, 7s. 6d.). This is not a text-book, and it supposes a certain knowledge of American history. It is a very fine historical essay, and no other book brings out in a more stimulating way the drama and excitement of the rise of the United States. Unlike many histories of America, the interest is not centred in the Eastern seaboard. The river Mississippi is the true hero of the story. It is, perhaps, particularly valuable for its study of Jacksonian democracy, and it might be argued that for an English student some understanding of this phenomenon is at once the most important and the most difficult task that confronts him.

American history seems sometimes to be a strange medley, in which lawless enterprise has gone hand in hand with a traditional reverence for the Constitution and for the law. The classic study on the American Constitution is Viscount Bryce's The American Commonwealth (two volumes, Macmillan, 1928, 42s.), the first edition of which was published in 1888. Subsequent editions, though doing something to bring the work more up to date, are not proportionately more valuable. One of the great advantages of this study lies in the fact that Bryce did not confine himself only to the Federal Government, but dealt also with those of the separate States. He was, of course, a great nineteenth-century Liberal and his work is naturally coloured by a number of liberal suppositions which were not always helpful when dealing with the Constitution in operation. An English reader should certainly also consult a very lively little book by Professor H. L. McBain, The Living Constitution (Macmillan, 1928, 4s.). The author makes it clear that many of the accepted formulae of American political theory, such as that of " the separation of powers", are of doubtful validity when the actual government of the country is considered. The book gains much from a number of suggestive comparisons with British constitutional theory and practice. Extracts from the debates in the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, the key to so much of early American history, may be found in Professor Morison's collection of documents, and the story of the Convention is told shortly in the first volume of Professor Hockett's The Constitutional History of the United States (Macmillan, Volume I, The Blessings of Liberty, 1776-1826, 1939. Volume II, A More Perfect Union, 1826-1876, 1940. 12s. 6d. each.) This is a clear, straightforward account of American constitutional history and it will be found particularly useful for its summaries of the leading cases before the Supreme Court. These should be familiar to any English student, not only those which produced Marshall's famous opinions and the vital Dred Scott case, but also certain others, less well known, which had a decisive influence on American history, such as Charles River Bridge Company v. Warren Bridge Company, ex parte Merryman and the Slaughter-house cases. A study of Marshall's views is essential to any consideration of American history and Bryce's survey of Marshall's influence on the development of the constitutional theory of the United States is one of the greatest passages in his book. The most important work of American political theory is, of course, The Federalist (Dent, Everyman Library, 3s.).

The greatest difficulty likely to face an English student

lies in the field of biographical study. He will not find it easy to obtain satisfactory lives of any of the great American statesmen, except Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton is a great deal too prejudiced and inaccurate to be of any real value. Lord Charnwood's Abraham Lincoln (Constable, 1924, 10s. 6d. net) is an admirable and sympathetic study, with a careful account of the causes of the Civil War. The same author has written a life of Theodore Roosevelt (Constable, ros. 6d. net). Lieut.-Colonel G. F. R. Henderson's Stonewall Jackson, now unfortunately out of print, is one of the finest of all military biographies, too whole-heartedly a piece of hero-worship, and certainly needing to be checked by recent work on the Civil War, summarized, for example, in Professor Morison's History; but, for all that, perhaps the greatest work on American history by an English writer. Sir Frederick Maurice's Lee the Soldier is limited in scope, as its title explains, but it gives a good portrait of its subject and a very clear account of the campaigns in the Peninsula. David Knowle's The American Civil War is not very satisfactory on the military history, but contains beautifullywritten appreciations of Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Lincoln's oratory may be studied in Letters and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln (Dent, Everyman Library, 3s.), but the speeches are unfortunately mutilated, even the Second Inaugural Address being allowed only excerpts.

The greatest work by any foreigner on the United States is de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, written after his visit to that country in 1833, and it is greatly to be regretted that there is no English translation of this work in print in this country. It is much more than a traveller's account; it is a most acute account of American civilization, and a recognition of the importance of the American experiment. Much in the subsequent development of the country will be more fully understood after a study of this book. The only work which can be compared with it is Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas (Dent, Everyman Library, 3s.): de Tocqueville was a practised and careful observer. The same cannot be said of Charles Dickens and Frances Trollope. The English student should certainly read or re-read Martin Chuzzlewit and American Notes by Dickens (various editions), and The Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Mrs. Trollope, but he must remember that they were the products of rather unusual people. He would do well to read also Giles Alington's The Growth of America (Faber, 1940, 12s. 6d.). This is a clear and readable account of American history up to the Civil War, but it is almost too uncritical. It would seem difficult after the work of the Beards, for example, to accept quite so readily the orthodox view of the founding of the Federal Constitution. But the chapter on American social life is excellent, particularly that part which describes the great quarrel between Dickens and the Americans over the Copyright Laws, a dispute which explains much of that author's spleen. Of the works of American explorers, travellers, and settlers, a rich mine, there exists one classic example to be procured in this country, Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail (various editions). It is the indispensable introduction to any study of the Red Indians and the Great Plains.

An Englishman studying the history of the United States will be well advised to turn to American fiction to provide the necessary background. He will not find much that is of value before the Civil War. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (various editions) is a historical document, to be read with due caution, but not to be cast aside as a tract. The novels of W. G. Simms, which would give a picture of the South before the Civil War, are not obtainable. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (Dent, Everyman, 3s. net) will show him something of transcendentalist New England, as will the familiar stories of Louisa Alcott. It is after the Civil War that American fiction came into its own. The English reader will at least begin to understand something of the size and complexity of the United States when he realizes that Bret Harte,