Stories of Heroism

PROFESSOR MACE’S NEW BOOK REVIEW BY CHARLES A. COULOMB.

In spite of repeated attempts at producing a history suitable for class-room work in the fourth or fifth grades of the elementary school, the teaching public still awaits a satisfactory book. Children cannot be interested in a mere chronological narrative, nor are they capable of forming sound judgments from groups of facts. Since the days of “Peter Parley,” therefore, the most satisfactory histories of the United States for children have been biographical. In the present work Professor Mace has so far followed tradition. But in the endeavor to secure more continuity of narrative than would otherwise be possible, the stories have been gathered together in groups of two or three or more. Each man in the group appears in his proper historical perspective instead of being partially eclipsed by the fame of some great personage whose biography is used to cover a long period of time or several historical movements. The author has selected his stories from those in which he finds a certain element of heroism, the term being broad enough, however, to cover the lives of Penn and Samuel F. B. Morse, as well as those of Drake and John Paul Jones.

The heroism of some of our great men is shown by overcoming great obstacles just as that of others is indicated by fighting the enemies of their country. So we find William Penn and James Oglethorpe associated with Hudson, the explorer, and Stuyvesant, the fighting Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, in the chapter about “The Men Who Planted Colonies for Many Kinds of People.”

Out of the three hundred and ninety-six pages in the book, two hundred and twenty-nine are devoted to our history prior to 1789, leaving but one hundred and sixty-seven to our history under the Constitution. The division seems to give a disproportionate amount of space to our Colonial and Revolutionary history. This is justified to some extent by the plan of the author. There is no question as to the romance to be found in the voyages of Polo and Drake, and in the life of Captain Smith. At the same time there are other equally dramatic features of our later history that might have been included, and so have given a better distribution of space. More room is given to Washington’s activities before the Revolution than to the rest of his life, which did not, it is true, cover so many years, but is certainly of more importance. With the exception of the statement that Grant was twice elected president, and the story of Edison and his inventions, the history of our country from 1865 to the battle of Manila Bay contains nothing worth recording, so far as this book is concerned. Out of the sixty-six names we do not find one jurist; one feels that Chief Justice Marshall’s name is certainly not sixty-seventh in our history.

The attempt to fix the facts of each chapter by a list of questions for study is to be commended, as is the unusually satisfactory index. Professor Mace has, besides, done what few scholars succeed in doing. He has written his book in such simple, clear English that the pupils for whom it is intended will have little difficulty in understanding it.

Most of the pictures have been selected for their dramatic value, but many portraits and pictures of places and things of historic interest are included in the book. On the whole, the book is a step forward, and the inequalities in it are no greater than those of other books that have otherwise less to commend them. In classes where the course of study in history does not extend beyond the Revolution, the book should have a wide use.

[A Primary History: Stories of Heroism. By William H. Mace, Professor of History in Syracuse University. Cloth, 8vo. xxv+ 396 pp. Rand, McNally & Co. Chicago, New York.]

Translations and Reprints

FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

“An invaluable series of Sources, still in course of publication.”—Report of the Committee of New England Teachers’ Association, p. 63.

This series contains translations from the original sources of European history from Roman times to the reorganization of Europe by the Congress of Vienna in the nineteenth century. Complete, the set is in six volumes, but the separate numbers can be had in pamphlet form at from fifteen to twenty-five cents.

The value of original source material to aid the pupil in obtaining a vivid sense of the life and manners of past ages is felt by all history teachers. But it cannot be emphasized too much.

How much more realistic and impressive than the cut-and-dried statement on the Crusades of the average text-book, are actual accounts by contemporaries and Crusaders themselves, as, for example, the statement by Fulcher of Chartres of the start:

“One saw an infinite multitude speaking different languages and come from divers countries.” ... “Oh, how great was the grief ... when husband left the wife so dear to him, his children also....”

Or the letter by Count Stephen from before the walls of Antioch, March 29, 1098:

“These which I write you are only a few things, dearest, of the many which we have done, and because I am not able to tell you, dearest, what is in my mind, I charge you to do right, to carefully watch over your land, to do your duty as you ought to your children and your vassals. You will certainly see just as soon as I can possibly return to you. Farewell.”

The Crusaders thus appear as real men and women to the pupil. Or let him read the text of the Act of Supremacy: “An act concernyinge the kynges Highness to be supreme head of the Churche of Englande and to have auctoryte to reforme and redresse all errours, heresyes and abuses in the same,” and he cannot but feel that he has gotten back to the source upon which the statements of the text-book are based.

It is this kind of material in convenient form that Translations and Reprints contain. The pamphlet form commends them especially for classroom use. In the bound form the six volumes are very well adapted for reference work in the school library.

Besides these extracts from the original sources, there are published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania the “Source Book of the Renaissance,” by Professor Merrick Whitcomb, “Documents on Federal Relations,” by Professor H. V. Ames, and various Syllabuses, those of special interest to teachers being Munro and Sellery’s Syllabus of the History of the Middle Ages, 1909, and Ames’s Syllabus of American Colonial History, revised edition, 1908.

Published by Department of History University of Pennsylvania PHILADELPHIA