and administrative, so remarkable and effective, that they have left monuments which are still regarded as marvelously impressive embodiments of organized capacity. The pyramids, especially those of Gizeh, while they were intended as royal tombs, have become for us an index of the Egyptian's mechanical and administrative ability to achieve, in the first great period of his national development which we call the Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B. C.). It was this remarkable unfolding of human life, nationally organized, and proudly master of the material forces in the midst of which it had grown up, which carried the first civilization to Europe after 8000 B. C., and set going that succession of states, with civilized equipment, which is still contending for supremacy. The first venturesome voyages of Nile sailors across the eastern Mediterranean, evidently before 3000 B. C., were therefore as momentous in unfolding a new world to early man, as was the voyage of Columbus in 1492. Europe had to be discovered by civilization just as did America. For the first thousand years after the rise of the centralized Egyptian state, the individual was lost in the development of state power and efficiency, Strangely enough, however, with the rise of a feudal state toward 2000 B. C., the spectacle of social oppression, the cry for social justice, the earliest discernible in the ancient world, awoke a response among the ruling classes. A clearly evident movement for social justice took form and produced some of the most remarkable tractates-the literature of the earliest known campaign for just treatment of the poor and the humble, which remind us of the utter ances of the Hebrew prophets moved by similar causes. Even the charge which the king delivered to the grand vizier when the latter assumed office was a veritable magna charta of justice and social kindness toward the friendless and unknown individual. The movement thus affected the organs of the state itself, which from the sovereign down, was expected to function with full consideration of the individual. This sensitiveness to social justice was part of the earliest great awakening to the imperishable value of character, both here and in the life to come. It gave us symbols like the balances of justice, and contributed much to the symbolism and to the ideals of human righteousness in the ancient world, which have become the heritage of modern times. The struggle for imperial power in Asia, begun by Egypt in the sixteenth century B. C., not only opened the tremendous drama of imperial ambition and international rivalry, which is still going on in Europe, but revealed to Egypt expanding vistas of universal power which gave birth to a universalism able to conceive the earliest monotheism, to discern a sole God of the universe, to whom all nations were admonished by the Egyptian Pharoah to bow down as the beneficent father of all men. Toward this lofty ideal, which in the hands of the Egyptian sovereign, failed to maintain itself in the fourteenth century B. C., the cyes of men are still looking in the present colossal collapse of what we once thought was a practicable and beneficent internationalism, but which has proven to be the old and familiar cloak of a selfish and sordid nationalism. England Before the Norman Conquest BY PROFESSOR LAURENCE M. LARSON, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. With the more recent chapters of English history thronged with events the importance of which reaches far beyond the narrow limits of the British kingdom, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find time and patience for the study of the earlier centuries of English life. In the minds of many teachers there is also doubt whether the study of distant ages is really worth while; in these imperialistic days when statesmen aim at world power and reckon in billions it seems futile to give precious hours to tracing the fortunes of little kingdoms that were scarcely larger than shires to-day. This objection is not wholly without force; there is much in earlier history that may and should be omitted; but there is also much that lies at the very roots of English and British development, without the knowledge of which the growth and changes of modern times will scarcely be understood. In those distant centuries the British race was slowly being formed; the English kingdom was taking shape; and England was gradually being drawn into closer relations with the more important parts of the European world. In the study of prehistoric times there is a temptation to dwell on the peculiarities of primitive life, on the forms (such as they were) of culture and civilization. This may very properly be done as it illustrates the progress of society from the exceedingly simple forms of existence in the cave dwellings to the more complex life in the modern city. More important, however, are the facts of racial development. The Stone Worker was subdued by the more efficient warrior of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Worker in his turn had to yield to the Celt who was armed with weapons of iron. But neither of these older races was wholly wiped out, and consequently the Britons whom Cæsar described for us were a somewhat mixed people. With the Romans came soldiers and merchants from all the lands of the Mediterranean world. During the early Middle Ages came the AngloSaxons and the Danes. The Normans arrived in the eleventh century. Since then from time to time other non-English elements have been added to the population of Great Britain. Hodgkin's suggestion that the inhabitants of England should be called Anglo Celts rather than Anglo-Saxons has much in its favor; but the older strains should not be wholly ignored, and perhaps it is more nearly correct to speak of the modern Englishman as of the English race. An important feature of English history is the many extensive and varied relations that England has established with other parts of the world. The British government and people are in certain respects interested in nearly all the lands of the earth; conversely the world is often keenly interested in the plans and fortunes of England. So far as we know the first cultured peoples that developed an interest in the British Isles were the Phoenicians and the Greeks whose traders visited Britain in the fourth century B. C. It is worth noting that British commerce which in modern times has grown to such immense proportions actually antedates the recorded history of the islands, and this fact should lead to a closer study of the physical features of the archipelago and the advantages of its geographical posi tion. The long period of Roman domination did not affect Britain so deeply as it affected other parts of the provincial world. It is therefore hardly expedient to dwell very long on the Roman period. In the past too much attention has been given to certain interesting details of the process of conquest and too little to the permanent results of Roman occupation. During these three centuries and a half the Britons were taught the forms of civilized life; Christianity was introduced; and the material resources of the country were developed. It is doubtless true that the departure of the legions was followed by a reaction toward barbarism; but Christianity maintained itself and sent forth missionaries like St. Patrick; when the English came they found a system of cultivated estates which probably affected their own plans of settlement and methods of agriculture; when they were ready to utilize the mineral resources of the island, they resumed work in the old mines that the Romans had opened and developed; when they began to build strongholds and cities they found the old Roman sites conveniently at hand. The invasion of the Angles and Saxons was an event of the first importance. They built the Old English kingdom and drew its boundaries very near where they run to-day; they gave the greater part of Great Britain a new language; with their poets the greatest literature of all time had its beginning. There is, however, no need to dwell on these matters as the average text-book is quite sure to do justice to the Old English period. Unfortunately the pupil is too often made to feel that the Anglo-Saxons were the only important element in Great Britain. Doubtless they were the most important, but the native Britain, the Roman missionary, and the Danish pirate also had a share in the making of England. In the eighth century the Germanic population of Britain was further strengthened by the invasion and settlement of the Northmen (Danes). It has been said that the passion for individual freedom and the love of a seafaring life came into the English race with the Norse blood; this may not be entirely true, but there can be no doubt that these characteristics were intensified by the addition of this new racial element. On the political side the importance of the invasion lay in the destruction of nearly all the English kingdoms and the organization of the Danelaw on their ruins. Two facts should be carefully noted: 1. Alfred's kingdom of Wessex alone survived, and this state became the hope of all who wished to throw off the Danish yoke. The English kingdoms were never united. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy grew out of the expansion of Wessex northward into the Danelaw, a process that continued for a period of more than two generations. 2. The Danelaw was not a political unit, but a group of independent states. Consequently the Danes were not able to hold their own against the constant pressure from the south. For a long time, however, they succeeded in making Saxon rule in the northern half of England extremely uncertain. The kingdom built up and organized by Alfred and his successors endured for nearly two hundred years. The first half of this period was an age of growth and power; the second half was an age of decline. It is customary to attribute. the downfall of the West Saxon dynasty to the incompetence of King Ethelred II; no doubt the king was incompetent, at least he did not possess the strength and the qualities of statesmanship that the age required. Other considerations, however, are also important: 1. The Danelaw was disloyal, at least the men of the north gave very little assistance against the Vikings; in return the pirates usually spared this part of the kingdom. 2. There was much dissatisfaction north of the Thames with Dunstan's reforms, especially with his efforts to build up monasticism at the expense of the secular priesthood. 3. For more than thirty years the invading Danes harried the loyal Anglo-Saxon territories south of the Thames; Wessex was "bled white." After 1016 the native English to a large extent lost control of the government of their country; the native aristocracy was largely destroyed and Cnut administered his kingdom largely by the aid of Scandinavian nobles and adventurers. His regime was scarcely popular, but it gave peace and security and the natives murmured very little after the first years. Nor were the English wholly pleased with the government of Edward the Confessor; the Northmen were driven out, but the masterful Normans were beginning to take their places. The events that center about the battle of Hastings were full of meaning for the future of English history, and should be studied with some care. Too often the Conquest is regarded as being determined by a single battle; but the study of the year 1066 should bring out the following points: 1. England was still disunited and the reign of Edward the Confessor was not of such a character as to promote national feeling. The men of the Dane law, though now under English leaders, in 1066 once more refused to support a Saxon King. 2. The fate of England was virtually decided at Stamford Bridge. The enemy was defeated, but the battle seriously weakened the English army. While Harold was in the north with his forces, the Normans landed in Sussex unopposed. The presence of the Danish alien affected the intellectual as well as the political life of the English people. It is generally held that the decline of Anglo-Saxon literature was due to the Norman conquest; as a matter of fact it began about the time of the accession of Cnut (1016). The Danelaw was the rock on which the Old English monarchy foundered. Suggestions for the Course in Medieval History BY PROFESSOR DANA C. MUNRO, OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. It is a commonplace that each generation re-interprets the history of the past to suit its own needs. Factors which were previously neglected are emphasized in order to explain matters which are of interest to the people who are studying the history. Examples of this tendency may be seen in the new emphasis on constitutional history which resulted from the thought aroused by the French revolution, or in the change from the history of the monarchs to that of the people, in the various countries, which was so marked a characteristic of the nineteenth century as a whole. The present generation is confronted with new problems, and naturally demands what light can be thrown upon these by history. This is entirely legitimate. But there is danger lest in the enthusiasm for the new points of view, we should neglect the well-known and fundamental features, and either pervert or caricature the history of the past. In the articles which are to be published in this MAGAZINE points will be stressed which should receive more attention than in the past; but these articles will do far more harm than good if they lead teachers to dwell upon these points to the neglect of essential facts which are necessary for any correct interpretation of the past. In teaching medieval history it has been customary at the beginning of the course to emphasize three factors, the Graeco-Roman civilization, the Christian Church, and the Germans. In the remainder of the course the first of these three has usually received little attention; something has been said about the influence upon the German of the Roman institutions, and especially of the Roman law; little or no emphasis has been laid upon the fact that the Roman Empire lasted on in the East for 1,000 years, although a lesson or two has usually been allotted to the later Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. One of the best of the text-books limits itself expressly to the history of Western Europe. For some time there has been a feeling that this was a mistake, and was due mainly to our ignorance of the importance and interest of the history of the Byzantine Empire. Since the war began history teachers have been constantly confronted with questions for which they had no adequate answers because of their neglect to study the history of Europe east of the Adriatic, by far the larger half of Europe. Naturally our interest in the history of our fore fathers will be most keen, and no one would advocate the neglect of the fundamental facts in their development, but in teaching this history we certainly should not omit the influences exerted upon them by the higher civilization of the Empire which had its capital at Constantinople. Moreover, as the numbers of the western peoples increased and their power became greater, they were constantly brought into contact with the peoples of the East. The Drang nach Osten is not wholly a condition of modern times. In order to understand the results of this contact for the peoples of western Europe it is essential to study the civilization and former history of the peoples with whom they came into contact, and with whom they mixed. Even a generation ago such a study would have been difficult. There was very little knowledge of the history of the Byzantine Empire, or of the Russians, or the Slavs in general; and in this country there was even less interest. Since that time there has been much study of these subjects; excellent books have been written, and the immense number of immigrants who have come to us from eastern Europe has forced upon our attention the necessity of studying their previous history and understanding their point of view if we are to Americanize them. Now the war has turned the attention of all of us to the problems of the Balkans, of the nearer East, and of the possibilities of success for the Russian revolution. No one of these subjects can be understood without a study of the past history. This is a fascinating story! "The abiding power of Rome had one of its manifestations in the Byzantine Empire, which for eight hundred years served as & bulwark to the West, Christianized and civilized the peoples of eastern Europe, maintained European commerce, and preserved for the peoples of a later age much that had been best in the civilization of Greece and of Rome. In studying the Byzantine Empire it is necessary to take up some conditions in Asia, and especially to master the fundamental features of the Mohammedan history. Some study has frequently been given to this because of its connection with the Crusades, and because of the Moslem civilization in Spain. But too little attention has been paid to the Mohammedan caliphates, and there has not been an adequate understanding of the part which they played in influencing the history of western Europe. The Turks and the Tartars are little more than names to the average pupil of history, and the recent revolution in Arabia seems incomprehensible because of a lack of knowledge of the past history of that country. The routes of commerce between Europe and Asia, as well as within Europe itself, need careful attention. Especially, because it was along these routes, and because of this commerce that many ideas were imported into western Europe. The prominence of the Italian cities, the growth of heresies and free thought in southern France and other centers of trade, the Renaissance, and the Reformation itself, cannot be explained without the background of this steady infiltration of ideas from the more advanced civilization of the East. All of these things should be made a part of the course in history. To return to the thought of the first paragraph, the great danger is that these may be so emphasized as to exclude some of the well-known and fundamental facts which have usually been taught. This danger is all the greater because anyone who has studied these subjects and has come to have some knowledge of their intense interest, is apt to exaggerate their importance. The teacher must discriminate, not neglecting to bring out the importance of the fundamental features, whether they have usually been taught or have just been brought into prominence by the interests of to-day. Suggestions on the Relation of American to BY PROFESSOR EVARTS B. GREENE, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. In deciding to enter the great European war, the United States has realized as never before that America can no longer be regarded as a world apart. This is a fact which the teacher of American history cannot leave out of account as he plans his work for the coming year. He will naturally be thinking more than ever of the relation between our own history and that of Europe-of what America owes to the old world and what has been our special contribution to the common stock of civilization. Each teacher should, of course, work out these problems largely for himself, and the results will not all be alike; but a few suggestions are offered in this introductory article, and others will follow in later issues of this MAGA ZINE. It will certainly help us to a right interpretation of American history if we remember that it is really a part of the history of Europe; that it records, for the most part, the expansion of European peoples and European civilization. It is, therefore, not reasonable to complain, as some writers do, that we have failed to develop a culture fundamentally different from that of Europe. The culture of the United States may and should differ from that of any particular European country, as the French does from the English or the Italian from the German, but to expect it to be something essentially non-European is quite absurd. The nucleus of this nation, the European immigrants who came here in the seventeenth century, chiefly from the British Isles, had to work almost exclusively, for the first generation at least, with the stock of ideas which they brought over with them. Governor Berkeley in Virginia had rather conservative ideas about religion and politics; Roger Williams and William Penn found in America the opportunity to try out radical theories of church and state. But, after all, the radicalism of Williams and the Quakers was just as much a European product as Berkeley's old-fashioned loyalty to Church and King. It is, of course, true that the experience of each passing generation in the new home modified these inherited ways of thinking, and produced American folkways different in one way or another from those of the old country. Radicals who got off in the wilderness by themselves could try social experiments quite impossible at home. The frontier life itself, as Professor Turner has so ably pointed out, tended to change men's thinking, emancipating them from conventions, breaking down class distinctions, and stimulating self-reliance. Much was gained by this experience; but, unless we accept Rousseau's theory that the ideal state is the state of nature, something was also lost for the time being; some of the virtues, as well as the vices of civilization, were left behind to be slowly recovered as the new society developed. What sort of civilization we should have had if the frontier had worked freely on the succeeding generations without any reinforcement of the European element, no man can tell; but of course that has practically never happened. Europe has not been for America like the God of the deists, who set the world going and then left it very much to itself. We have never been left to ourselves. Colonization, for instance, did not stop with the seventeenth century, but continued with the Scotch-Irish and German immigrants of the eighteenth century, the Germans and the Irish of the middle nineteenth century, the Scandinavians, the Mediterranean peoples, and the Slavs of the last few decades. These people have not only come as individuals to seek their fortunes, but they have often maintained a distinct community life of their own. The later immigrants especially have connected us with parts of Europe with which we had previously had little or nothing to do. Not only has the old European blood been constantly reinfused into our society, but we have physically come much closer to Europe. The ocean is still there, the mathematical distances remain unchanged, but the practical meaning of these facts is quite different. Throughout our so-called colonial era, the crossing of the Atlantic was a great adventure, long and full of danger. To-day a journey from New York to Liverpool takes about as many days as it then took weeks; and for the communication of important news this distance hardly counts. An interview with a politician in London or Berlin may be read the same day in Chicago or San Francisco, if our journalists think it worth while, and the censors are willing to let it pass. But these are not the only ways in which we have been brought closer to Europe. More important still is the fact that the American environment of our individual men and women is much less different from that of Europe than it used to be. We now have many of the material advantages of an older society -a more efficient exploitation of natural resources through a complicated organization of industry and commerce. We are nearer to Europe also in many of the finer products of civilization-quite impossible for the frontiersmen-in our universities, libraries, and scientific collections; in the application of art to pictures, public buildings, and gardens. Nor is it only in the more comfortable features of an older society that we are reproducing European conditions. We are being made to realize that our natural resources, great as they are, are not so great that we can afford to waste them. No longer are there boundless areas of free land for the worker who feels himself cramped at home. Like our cousins across the Atlantic, we must think hard about conservation for the sake of our own future and that of coming generations. On both sides of the ocean we have the same painful contrast of luxurious wealth with the struggle for bare existence; and the same insistent demands for a radically different and more just distribution of wealth. Less and less can we feel ourselves a peculiar people; more and more we are enjoying the gains and bearing the burdens of a common civilization. If this is true, if America and Europe are more and more sharers in a common experience, can we still think of our country as making any distinctive contribution to the common stock. If so, what is that contribution? Is it not essentially this? For three centuries, this continent has been a great laboratory for succeeding generations of Europeans. Experiments in church and state and society, in religious liberty and democracy, which could not easily be performed in the old world-a world too crowded for experiments in high explosives-could be carried on with comparative safety in the wide open spaces of young America. It is not so much that we were a unique people as that we had a unique opportunity. So it came about that the French reformers of 1789 found inspiration in the American Revolution; that half a century later European thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville were encouraged by our experiments in religious liberty to believe that religion might live without the support of the state; that in our own time we have been hoping to make a real contribution to the safety and progress of European democracy. Latin American History in Our Secondary Schools BY N. ANDREW N. CLEVEN, PH.D., SAN DIEGO HIGH SCHOOL AND JUNIOR COLLEGE. Professor Jastrow has again rendered the teacher of history and the educator a distinct service by calling attention to the real purpose of history. Human history, he reminds us, is a continuous evolutionary process. We may treat of particular units, or races, or peoples; or we may treat of the subject of history as a whole. Whatever may be our plan there must always be a clear conception of the essential oneness of human history. We may be compelled for various and sundry reasons to divide the whole subject into segments as was done by the Committee of Five. This committee gave us the four block arrangement: one block for ancient, one for modern, one for English, and one for American history with civics. This plan makes it increasingly difficult to keep clearly in mind the fundamental element of the unity of history. How is the teacher, much less the student, to know what to select and what to reject and still retain this element of unity? The four block system is admittedly inadequate in regard to the content of history. The most Paper read before the Social Science Section of the Los Angeles Teachers' In titute, December 22, 1916. glaring instance of this is the course erroneously called American history. What does the average senior, pursuing this subject, know about the peoples immediately to the north and the south of the United States? What does he care about the part those Americans have played in the life of our people, or the part that our people play in the lives of the British and Latin Americans? He certainly is not much concerned with Panamerican-mindedness. The almost pathetic provincialism of the average American is very generally reflected in the boys and girls of our secondary schools. There is need, therefore, of a rearrangement of our general course in history. An enrichment and enlargement of the content of the course is imperative if we would adequately meet the needs of the times. The newer tendencies of the age in education demand the change. The colossal tragedy of the World War has focused thought on the very fundamentals of human society. Systems of education have probably never been subjected to such searching analysis as they are the present time. The keynote of the age is reconstruction: reconstruction of the whole sec |