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advance of liberty as the clue to history, Acton was enabled to suggest an interpretation which he did not live to complete. If we criticise him to-day, it is not because he took a general idea as a guide, but because he had not more thoroughly analysed its meaning.

The conclusion is not that the historian must be either a propagandist or a moralist in the usual sense of those terms. If he is a moralist who offers ethical judgments from his own. subjective store, he is only preaching one more of the sermons destined for the rubbish-boxes outside the second-hand bookstalls of the world. Neither need he be a propagandist suppressing the facts which tell against his a priori theory, thus adding to ignorance rather than to knowledge. The creative historian may work, as Maitland did, after the manner of a scientist, using a hypothesis of social development which the discovery of new facts may modify, destroy or establish.

The student of human society finds his material both in the facts of his own day and in the record of past events. There are certain advantages in working mainly upon historical material : in dealing with the past it is possible to escape the largely subjective judgments of the present, and it is convenient to be able to set some limits upon the evidence to be examined. An historian who thinks of himself, at least in part, as a social scientist, must begin by admitting and allowing for his prejudices. He may well pay attention to the injunction of Darwin to make particular note of facts which do not easily tally with his chosen hypothesis. The theory with which he works will necessarily be the result of combining his personal experience and observation of human behaviour, his knowledge of the conclusions and theories of other social sciences and the suggestions of his historical data. If he does not understand men whom he has seen, he will not understand historical characters whom he has not seen. Finally, when

he has reached some conclusion as the result of his research he may be forgiven for writing history, and there is every reason why his conclusions should be presented in such artistic form as his literary ability permits. An approach of this kind need not lead to the production of books of the type of most Ph.D. theses.

Whether the historian will ever be able to formulate generalizations about the social behaviour of men which can be dignified by the name of laws depends ultimately, no doubt, on the success

or failure of psychological investigation of all kinds. If the historian is slow in offering his aid to the social sciences to-day, it is partly because he is still, as Professor Pollard once pointed out, mainly interested in answering the question "how" and neglecting the question " why," is still trying to cover great sweeps of time with insufficient knowledge of the basic material, and naturally remembers that the original plea for a scientific history often led to the writing of books which were unreadable-a deplorable result due to an unnecessary misunderstanding of the nature of scientific method.

At the present moment, in the absence of established principles of social psychology, the work of the historian who wishes really to understand the nineteenth century must be to investigate in far greater detail the actual mechanisms by which institutions worked, the real rather than the logical or chronological connections of ideas, and the relationships between economic, political and psychological forces. The life of Palmerston provides innumerable examples. Mr. Guedalla's book suggests that no such "Life" can be satisfying until a number of shorter studies have cleared the ground. As he shows us, Palmerston was for a long time undoubtedly the most popular man in England. Now we have not even begun to discover the reasons for such a popularity. Bagehot's contemporary comment upon such figures as Palmerston and Gladstone is still the most suggestive work ever done on this subject in England. We can all make generalizations good enough for undergraduate consumption. Possible analysis might show that Palmerston appealed to the sporting, Disraeli to the romantic, and Gladstone to the moral side of the English middle classes. If the historian set himself to investigate such a problem he might really help to explain how democracies work, and what are the constituents of popular leadership; we need have no fear that his book would be dull.

Again, Mr. Guedalla tells us that Palmerston was more radical than he has often been thought. He was a Free Trader before Cobden, and left the orthodox Conservative party with Canning as a believer in Catholic emancipation. Although, as Mr. Guedalla says, he adapted some of his views to a changing world, it is clear that he became a drag upon the Liberalism which advanced in the century. It would be a fascinating line of enquiry

to investigate the nature of his influence upon political change. And the answer would necessarily throw some light upon one fundamental historical question the relationship between personal and economic forces in history. Some writers to-day still talk as if legislation was entirely the result of individual conflicts; others declare that economic causes explain everything. We really know very little about it.

One more example: Palmerston's foreign policy raises the whole question of the causes of war. Were nineteenth century wars in fact due to the system of State sovereignty, to the influence of individual persons like Palmerston, to class government, to economic and scientific delusions, or to the inherent pugnacity of man? Any complete account of the causes of war will no doubt include all these factors, but the proportion of their influence, as well as the mechanism of their operation, is almost wholly unexplored.

The looseness and uncertainty of our generalizations on these subjects will continue until we have begun the serious study of nineteenth century history. It is only a few years since enterprising historians discovered that the political histories of their day gave only the most superficial explanations of historical events. They introduced the study of economic history, because they saw that major economic factors lay beneath, and ultimately controlled, political changes. No competent historian to-day would venture upon any historical interpretation without considering economic factors. It is surely obvious now that the understanding of psychological phenomena is equally important. Historians have so far remained wonderfully blind to the fact (which they would never forget in their private or political lives) that the behaviour of groups of men is the result of delusion as well as of knowledge, and that the ostensible grounds of group or individual action are seldom the real ones. It is therefore probable that a large part of our explanation of why things have happened is quite erroneous. For the events of one year were usually not simply the results of previous historical events, but also of people's mistaken idea of what those past events had been.

This side of history offers a new and fruitful field. We have plenty of material, in the nineteenth century at least, for investigating what people actually thought. The unexplored files of newspapers are naturally neglected as historical material, because they

add little or nothing to our knowledge of political events. But if we wish to understand the reason for any event in which popular opinion played a part, they are indispensable because they give some indication, necessarily incomplete, of the ideas which actuated large groups of persons. The Crimean War is an interesting example. England's participation was not only due to the weakness of the Aberdeen Cabinet, to the fears of statesmen that Russia was destroying the "balance of power," or that our trade in the Near East was endangered, but also to the popularity of Palmerston and to the fact that the events of 1853 had a certain superficial but misleading resemblance to those of 1849. Most Englishmen supported the Crimean War in the belief that we were fighting for the freedom of Italy, Hungary and Poland, with all of whom they had sympathised in their struggles with Russia and Austria a few years before.

It seems likely that detailed analysis of the changes and influence of group opinion through the century would show that events of this kind were the rule rather than the exception. At any rate, it is clear that we need a psychological interpretation as well as an economic and political one, and that no interpretation can even approach completeness which neglects the complexities of traditional beliefs and popular impulses and does not analyse their effect upon the superficial narrative of accepted history. This is realised clearly enough by those who try to understand primitive institutions and by psychologists who go to history for examples. But the historians have not yet learnt to look upon the psychologist as an ally or to expect aid from the student of primitive man. In their natural enjoyment of the pageantry of States they forget that our primitive ancestors are still alive and at work in the individuals who compose the modern State.

KINGSLEY MARTIN

I.

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN

The Perils of Amateur Strategy as exemplified by the attack on the
Dardanelles fortress in 1915. By Lieutenant-General Sir GERALD
ELLISON, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. Longmans, Green & Co.

2. Soldiers and Statesmen, 1914-18. By Field-Marshal Sir WILLIAM ROBERTSON, Bt., G.C.B., etc., etc. 2 vols. Cassell & Co.

THE

'HE truth of Benedetto Croce's assertion that "every specialisation has its own peculiar narrow-mindedness, whereby it repudiates or repels other specialisations" is the first impression left on the mind after reading the two books whose titles stand at the head of this article. Both are written by specialists-soldiers-in order to warn their fellow-countrymen of the grave dangers to which the British Empire was exposed during the late war owing to the action, inaction, or interference of certain other specialists, called "statesmen." One is disposed to assume that there is some deep innate " repulsion " (to use the word of the Italian philosopher) between the mind of the soldier and that of the statesman. If this is true it would seem that the prospect of a democracy winning a great war is remote, since under a democratic form of government statesmen, not soldiers, have control of national policy, and policy is likely to fail in attaining its ends if there is disharmony between those who direct and those who apply the national effort. Some of us may draw empirical comfort from the recollection that in 1918 it was the democratic governments which won the greatest of modern wars, while it was the undemocratic ones which were beaten ; but this is merely to beg the question, a question of far too vital importance to our country to admit of so facile a conclusion. It is essential that the peoples of the British Empire should know exactly what were the relations between their leading soldiers and principal statesmen during the late war, and, if those relations were unsatisfactory, to learn why this was the case in order to prevent the recurrence of so dangerous a state of affairs. In different ways and in different degrees Sir William Robertson and Sir Gerald Ellison have made the most valuable contribution to the investigation of this grave problem which has yet appeared. In the trial of "Soldiers v. Statesmen" they put the case for the prosecution clearly and

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