But all this, let us state it once more, did not matter very much. When all is peace and happiness--when the hospitals are empty of patients--when the weather is fine and people are dying at the usual rate--it matters little whether the world at large takes a deep interest in the work of the Board of Health. The public knows that somewhere, somehow, someway, there exists a Board of Health composed of highly trained medical experts. They also appreciate from past experiences that these watchful gentlemen “know their job” and that no ordinary microbe can hope to move from Warsaw to Chicago without prompt interference on the part of the delousing squad. But when an epidemic threatens the safety of the community, then the public hastens to the nearest telephone booth--calls up the Health Commissioners and follows their instructions with implicit faith. It demands that these public servants shall spend the days of undisturbed health to prepare for the hour of sickness when there is no time for meditation and experiment. The public at large had a right to expect a similar service from its historians. But unfortunately, when the crisis came, the scientific historical machine collapsed completely. In Germany, the home country of the system of _historische Wissenschaftlichkeit_, the historian became the barker outside the Hohenzollern main tent, shouting himself hoarse for the benefit of half-hearted fellow citizens and hostile neutrals, extolling the ancestral Teutonic virtues until the whole world turned away in disgust. In France, they arrange those things better. Even the most unhealthy mess of nationalistic scraps can be turned into a palatable dish by a competent cook of the Parisian school. In England, the historian turned propagandist, and for three years, the surprised citizens of Copenhagen, Bern, and Madrid found their mail boxes cluttered with mysterious bundles of state documents duly stamped, beautifully illustrated, and presented (as the enclosed card showed) with the compliments of Professor So-and-so of Such-and-such College, Oxford, England. In Russia, a far-seeing government had taken its measures many years before. Those historians who had refused to be used as _cheval de bataille_ for the glory of the house of Romanoff, were either botanising along the banks of the Lena or had long since found a refuge in the universities of Sofia and Geneva. I do not know what happened in Japan, but I have a suspicion that it was the same thing, the entire world over. The historian turned apologist. He was as useful as a doctor who would show a partiality to the native streptococcus on the grounds of loyalty to the land of his birth.