ALLYN AND BACON'S SERIES OF SCHOOL HISTORIES THE STORY OF MODERN PROGRESS WITH A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF EARLIER PROGRESS BY WILLIS MASON WEST SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT FOREWORD My Modern History, of eighteen years ago, and its successor, The Modern World, taught insistently, and, for long in rather lonely fashion, the perils in Prussian militarism and autocracy. In 1902, when worship of Bismarckian "efficiency" was at its height in America and England, after presenting details, I ventured to sum up this matter thus (Modern History, page 477): The story of the making of Germany shows plainly enough that the process was one not merely of "blood and iron" but also of fraud and falsehood. It is hard to tell the story of such gigantic and successful audacity and craft without seeming to glorify it. . . . Bismarck's success has tended too, probably, to lower the tone of international morality; and his policy of fraud and violence has left to Germany a legacy of burning questions which will grieve it long. The rule of the drill-sergeant and of the police officer, the hostility to the Empire felt by the Danes of Sleswig and the French of Alsace-Lorraine, the bitter jealousy between Prussia and Bavaria, and the immense armies of all Europe are among the results of his policy. It is too early yet to say that that policy is truly victorious.1 Because of this anti-Prussianism, the book suffered heavily in the years before the war from both open and secret proGerman attacks. But when the war came, no hurried revision was necessary to justify the volume to American schools. Nor is any change of attitude on these matters needed now. 1 July 9, 1918, when the last German drive was still at its high tide of success, and Haig was fighting almost despairingly, "with our backs to the wall," the Kölnische Zeitung, in an exultant editorial, quoted this paragraph, and added: "Don't think you are listening to Lloyd George or Wilson delivering one of their speeches dripping with hypocritical morality. No, this stuff is in a schoolbook of that country which we believed friendly to us! Here are the roots of hatred to Germany. . . . We must change all this after the war." ... |