Fully 25% of the space in each approved text-book on history is devoted to war. “The test of a state is its ability to wage war,” is a statement frequently found in text-books. “Americans demonstrated their instinctive military talent.” “Fair field of battle,” “valor,” “bravery,” “audacious courage,” “brilliant,” “magnificent drive,” “our great adventure,” are terms frequently used to glorify war. Underlying conditions predisposing to international friction, such as commercial rivalry, territorial ambitions, centralized autocratic government control and the maintenance of gigantic military and naval establishments, are rarely, and usually very inadequately, analyzed. In analyzing the results of war, emphasis is always laid on the territorial gains acknowledged in the treaty of peace. If reference is made at all to tremendous destruction and cost of war, it is to point out that it was worth while. No attempt is made in the text-books to understand developments in Russia. Sweeping terms are used in characterizing the present regime there; such phrases as “two sinister figures, Lenin and Trotzky,” “brazenly serving Germany’s ends,” “the anarchy known as Bolshevism,” are frequent. In treating of the world war, all recent text-books perpetuate the hate and rancor engendered by the war. The guiltlessness of the allies is always proclaimed. CHAPTER LXII THE BLINDFOLD SCHOOL OF PATRIOTISM Needless to say, it is not only the military men who are revising our school text-books; all the business interests are wielding their blue pencils, and likewise the religious groups, and the racial and national groups. In New York City, Commissioner of Accounts David Hirshfield is leading a crusade against those who want to bring up our school children without hatred for England. The commissioner held a series of hearings, and gave an opportunity for all patriots to vent their dissatisfaction with school text-books which failed to make proper capital out of Betsy Ross and John Paul Jones, and which committed such offenses as mentioning that Sam Adams was a smuggler, or that Alexander Hamilton had said: “Your people, Sir, is a great beast.” Commissioner Hirshfield published at the expense of the city of New York an elaborate pamphlet, listing the offenses of such “un-American” text-books—David S. Muzzey’s “American History,” Willis M. West’s “History of the American People,” Albert B. Hart’s “School History,” and so on.