Note 53 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

See, for instance, Fustel de Coulanges’s study De la manière d’écrire l’histoire en France et en Allemagne. It will be observed that this author’s denunciation of the German historians exactly applies to certain French historians of recent years, with this difference: That the German alters history to exalt his nation and the Frenchman to exalt a political system. In general it may be said that the ‘tendencious’ philosophies of the Germans lead to national war, and those of the French to civil war. Is it necessary to repeat, after so many others, how much this proves the moral superiority of the latter?