Kansas City daily journal., 1897-01-17

records and the StatesmanS manuals for
all the information necessary and adequate
TO make history of, but they began to study
the people in all their phases of life and
conduct, their thoughts and sentiments, for
the purpose of constructing history on a
new basis. Johns Hopkins university led
the way; next the professors and lecturers
at Harvard, including such noted men as
Justin Winsor and John Fiske. They
prohed to the bottom, and brought to light
much that was known only to the rum
magers of old manuscripts. Their investi-
cations threw different side-lights on many
questions which had been settled so long,
and settled, too, on erroneous premises,
that the new discoveries came in the ma
ture of revelations from the dead. 1t was
found that there was very wide difference
between writing history from the facts as
they had existed at the time, and in spin
ming them out of the fertile brain of an
advocate. One point will serve to illustrate
this, perhaps, in a very familiar way. Mas
sachusetts for hundred years has been
cited as the champion of the public school
system of the world, and occupied the field
without competitor in sight; but recent
investigation tends to show that the Dutch,
who first settled in New York, taught Mas
sachusetts her first lesson in this direction,
and so strongly has this point been con-
tested during the last ten years that the
New Yorkers are fully persuaded their
state is entitled to the credit, if history be
correctly written.
But this is only a minor consideration.
The method has put a new light on our
knowledge of many historical facts, and
has been the means of plucking the laurels
from some brows and placing them on
others, and this work OF robbing will prob
ably be continued till every fact of real
Importance will be put where it properly
belongs.
One of the most notable changes in this
transformation is the perspective in the
historical pictures of the wars in which
we have been engaged. This new history
is What may be called the peace side of
history in opposition to the military phase
of national existence.
War, by all such, is regarded as an un-
natural condition of the history of a nation
Just as men who are usually peaceable
will. at election times, get together and
fight. War, they say, is an abnormal con-
dition, an explosion of national feeling, and
that these explosions, as compared with
the peaceful arts, should not dispropor
tionally fill the pages of history.
Since the last hundred years this country
has been engaged in but few wars, and
these should not be made to fill nearly so
much space as they do in our text books.
1t is argued that the general tendency on
the rising generation by this undue promi-
ncnce of the war spirit is to give false
views of life, and of that in which real
happiness. national as well as individual.
consists. 1t is contended that children, be-
ing quite imaginative, and filed with en-
thusiasm in regard to the number of men
killed and wounded in battles. fail to esti-
mate such things at their true worth. and
that the real victories of peace are over
looked and despised. or at least considered
as trivial. Whether all these things are
true or false is neither affirmed nor denied,
but the object of this article is to show the
tendency of recent thought along this par
ticular phase of historical reconstruction
and that the trend of historical research is
in the direction of the people, and not of a
few leaders.