“The study of Plutarch and ancient historians,” says George Trevelyan, “rekindled the breath of liberty and of civic virtue in modern Europe.” The mental freedom of the Renaissance was the gift of the long-ignored and reinstated classics, of a renewed and generous belief in the vitality of human thought, the richness of human experience. Apart from the intellectual precision which this kind of knowledge confers, it is indirectly as useful as a knowledge of mathematics or of chemistry. How shall one nation deal with another in this heaving and turbulent world unless it knows something of more importance than its neighbour’s numerical and financial strength--namely, the type of men it breeds. This is what history teaches, if it is studied carefully and candidly. How did it happen that the Germans, so well informed on every other point, wrought their own ruin because they failed to understand the mental and moral make-up of Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans? What kind of histories did they have, and in what spirit did they study them? The Scarborough raid proved them as ignorant as children of England’s temper and reactions. The inhibitions imposed upon the port of New York, and the semi-occasional ship which they granted us leave to send from it, proved them more ignorant than kittens of America’s liveliest idiosyncrasies. In the United States an impression prevails that the annals of Asia and of Europe are too long and too complicated for our consideration. Every now and then some educator, or some politician who controls educators, makes the “practical” suggestion that no history prior to the American Revolution shall be taught in the public schools. Every now and then some able financier affirms that he would not give a fig for _any_ history, and marshals the figures of his income to prove its uselessness. Yet our vast heterogeneous population is forever providing problems which call for an historical solution; and our foreign relations would be clarified by a greater accuracy of knowledge. To the ignorance of the average Congressman and of the average Senator must be traced their most conspicuous blunders. Back of every man lies the story of his race. The Negro is more than a voter. He has a history which may be ascertained without undue effort. Haiti, San Domingo, Liberia, all have their tales to tell. The Irishman is more than a voter. He has a long, interesting and instructive history. It pays us to be well informed about these things. “The passionate cry of ignorance for power” rises in our ears like the death-knell of civilization. Down through the ages it has sounded, now covetous and threatening, now irrepressible and triumphant. We know what every one of its conquests has cost the human race; yet we are content to rest our security upon oratorical platitudes and generalities, upon the dim chance of a man being reborn in the sacrament of citizenship.