nsidered.

There was but one rule. "Did the country or the person in question
produce a new idea or perform an original act without which the history
of the entire human race would have been different?" It was not a
question of personal taste. It was a matter of cool, almost mathematical
judgment. No race ever played a more picturesque role in history than
the Mongolians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or
intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind.

The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dramatic
episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just as well never
have existed at all. In the same way, the history of the Dutch Republic
is not interesting because once upon a time the sailors of de Ruyter
went fishing in the river Thames, but rather because of the fact
that this small mud-bank along the shores of the North Sea offered a
hospitable asylum to all sorts of strange people who had all sorts of
queer ideas upon all sorts of very unpopular subjects.

It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day of their
glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas City. But our
present civilisation would be very different had neither of these two
little cities of the Mediterranean basin existed. And the same (with due
apologies to the good people of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of
this busy metropolis on the Missouri River.

And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one other fact.

When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon
or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know
from what angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful
in the choice of our historians as we are in the selection of our
physicians. We think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go
at that. But the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian
household somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differently
upon every question of human relationships from his neighbour who as
a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant exhortations of Robert
Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed Devils. In due course of time, both
men may forget their early training and never again visit either church
or lecture hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays
with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they write or
say or do.

In the preface to this book, I