The uses of history are most readily shown in the irresistible opposition which it presents to this attitude; and herein lies the practical value of all records of the past in whatever form they are placed before us. The simple consciousness that we who live in the present day are figures silhouetted against the luminous curtain of former ages produces in our minds a definite sense of proportion and decorum which is our surest defence against anarchy and uncontrol. Man’s knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong, whether divinely inspired or not, is the result of his accumulated experience. It is an inherited instinct, derived like the instinct of self-defence, from the teachings of the past; and on that intuitive sense is based all law, all order, and all righteousness. To destroy antiquities, and consequently to obliterate a piece of history, is to help in the undermining of the very basis of orderly society and the weakening of the foundations upon which the peace of the world is to be built. The mind which can regard with equanimity the deliberate destruction of a glorious relic of bygone activities can have little love for the human race, and can hold in no esteem the traditional codes from which the goodness and the balance of mankind are mainly derived. It is ridiculous to suppose that common sense and natural morality will direct our lives upon the true course. If we have no traditions, if the past experiences of our race be obliterated, we may stray from the road as the Germans strayed, and be utterly lost in the howling wilderness of materialism, where the qualities long-loved and endeared to us by time are forgotten, and the soul of mankind is shed. Though we do not always realise the fact, it is the consciousness of history which gives us individually that natural discipline discarded by the Germans in place of an artificial obedience. It is the inherent sense of history that is the source of the strength and the sweetness of liberalism and democracy, for it gives to every individual a feeling of responsibility which causes him to act with a kind of reasonable sobriety on all occasions. I do not mean to say that a man is more decorous because he has learnt that William the Conqueror landed in England in 1066; I am not referring to a knowledge of the details of historical events, but rather to a consciousness of history in its widest aspect, a consciousness not necessarily derived at all from the study of books. And it is the presence around us of ancient buildings and other relics of the past which prevents this consciousness from becoming dimmed in the hurly-burly of to-day’s activities.