The Eleventh Edition, concludes the _Twentieth Century_, after recording many other specimens of ignorance and inefficiency, “is not only insular; it betrays its class-conscious limitation in being woefully defective in that prophetic instinct which guided Robertson Smith in his choice of contributors to the Ninth Edition, and the contributors themselves in their treatment of rapidly changing subjects.” Robertson Smith, let it be noted, stood for fairness, progressiveness, and modernity; whereas the _Britannica’s_ present editor is inflexibly reactionary, provincial, and unjust to an almost incredible degree. The foregoing quotations are not isolated objections: there were others of similar nature. And these few specimens are put down here merely to show that there appeared sufficient evidence, both in England and America, to establish the purely imaginary nature of the _Britannica’s_ claims of completeness and inerrancy, and to reveal the absurdity of the American Ambassador’s amazing pronouncement. Had the sale of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ been confined to that nation whose culture it so persistently and dogmatically glorifies at the expense of the culture of other nations, its parochial egotism would not be America’s concern. But since this reference work has become an American institution and has forced its provincial mediocrity into over 100,000 American homes, schools and offices, the astonishing truth concerning its insulting ineptitude has become of vital importance to this country. Its menace to American educational progress can no longer be ignored. England’s cultural campaign in the United States during past decades has been sufficiently insidious and pernicious to work havoc with our creative effort, and to retard us in the growth of that self-confidence and self-appreciation which alone make the highest achievement possible. But never before has there been so concentrated and virulently inimical a medium for British influence as the present edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. These books, taken in conjunction with the methods by which they have been foisted upon us, constitute one of the most subtle and malign dangers to our national enlightenment and development which it has yet been our misfortune to possess; for they bid fair to remain, in large measure, the source of America’s information for many years to come.