THE STUDY OF HISTORY.

President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia calls attention in his annual report to the growing importance of history and international law not only as subjects of study by the student body but as objects of reform by the college authorities. He emphasizes in particular the need for studying these two subjects in their comparative aspects. In making this allusion, Dr. Butler has probably hit upon as grave an error in our system of pedagogy as can ever be made the subject of controversy by our educational reformers. It is that of allowing personal or national or even religious bias to enter into the teaching of the story of the past; it is compelling the student to view the events of history through the colored glass of the instructor's personal feelings and prejudices rather than being acquainted with the facts as they are.

Nearly all of us can remember with what savage pride we read of the Pyrrhic victory of the British troops at Bunker Hill, or of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Nor have the wounds occasioned by the Civil War been entirely healed; rash argument and unreasoning dissension still have their way in many an oral encounter.

At a time when the future peace of the world depends so much on what is being said and thought today, it seems only reasonable that all measures calculated to insure the elimination, so far as possible, of all class or national prejudices in our system of academic instruction, should receive the hearty support of all concerned. A pure and unblased history of the past has yet to be taken and has yet to be written.