The Story of Mankind Part 32

To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw materials and coal.

Especially coal. Meanwhile the ma.s.s of the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediaeval inst.i.tution was then suddenly called upon to handle the highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world. It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had been laid down centuries before. The different states created enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic} there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object, and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.

Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time. Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when Russia and j.a.pan fought for the possession of certain terri-tories which belonged to the Chinese people.

Such conflicts, however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight. Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th century.

They a.s.sociated the idea of violence with the long-ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties. Every day they read in their papers of still further inventions, of groups of English and American and German scientists who were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic community of people who recognise certain common ideals,) was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to warn the others. But the others were occupied with their own affairs.

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had been a st.u.r.dy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of navigating which had been handed down to them by their ancestors.

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part, then another of the old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were discarded for steam. Better living quarters were established, but more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they did not like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in the same way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of navigation which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century.

In their cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely incompetent.

The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial and Colonial liners began to try and outrun each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did happen. You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pa.s.s through that part of the ocean.

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful need of men who will a.s.sume the new leadership--who will have the courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship.

They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They will have to fight their way to the top against every possible form of opposition.

When they reach the bridge, mutiny of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he shall be the hero of the ages.

AS IT EVER SHALL BE

"The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our "a.s.sessors and judges"

as the ancient Egyptians called upon "the G.o.ddess Isis and the G.o.ddess Nephtys" on behalf of their dead. "Irony and Pity" are both of good counsel; the first with her "smiles" makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her tears." "The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to despise and hate."

And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I bid you farewell.

8 Barrow Street, New York. Sat.u.r.day, June 26, xxi.

AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY, 500,000 B.C.--A.D. 1922

THE END

CONCERNING THE PICTURES

CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The day of the historical textbook without ill.u.s.trations has gone.

Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events.

While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all drawn for children and their ideas of art are very different from those of their parents.

To all teachers the author would give this advice--let your boys and girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you have a chance. You can show a cla.s.s a photograph of a Greek temple or a mediaeval castle and the cla.s.s will dutifully say, "Yes, Ma'am," and proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own picture of "the building of a temple," or "the storming of the castle," and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children, before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after a fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the work of certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is quite frequently prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes, and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing accuracy.

The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remember certain events "in their proper sequence." The experiments of many years in the Children's School of New York has convinced the author that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while very few will ever remember what they have merely read.

It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous story.

Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any other way.

Neither the publishers nor the author claim that "The Story of Mankind"

is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for children. It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such a fashion that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall ask for more.

To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers have asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a list of readable and instructive books.

The list was made and was duly printed.

The parents who live near our big cities will experience no difficulty in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may not find it convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and Liveright will be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books that are desired.

They want it to be distinctly understood that they have not gone into the retail book business, but they are quite willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical education, and all orders will receive their immediate attention.

AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN

"Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw wine for the G.o.ds. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the G.o.ds were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don't explain that 'gris'

in this connection doesn't mean 'grease'; don't trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't insist philologically that when every shepherd 'tells his tale' he is not relating an anecdote but simply keeping 'tally' of his flock. Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer."--("On the Art of Reading for Children," by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)

The Days Before History

"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, Volume I.

How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the stories he told about the fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple, ill.u.s.trated account of these things for children. "The Story of Ab," by Stanley Waterloo.

A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified edition of this for little children is "Ab, the Cave Man" adapted by William Lewis Nida.) "Industrial and Social History Series," by Katharine E.

Dopp.

"The Tree Dwellers--The Age of Fear"

"The Early Cave-Men--The Age of Combat"

"The Later Cave-Men--The Age of the Chase"

"The Early Sea People--First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters"

"The Tent-Dwellers--The Early Fishing Men"

Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make pottery, how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea.

"Ancient Man," written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon.