The teacher of history who is also a believer in what (for want of a better word) we call internationalism, must often have asked himself in despondency why it is that the teaching of history in the past has so often worked against peace and international good feeling. For certainly the devil can quote history to his purpose and Clio has too often been a vivandière in the army of politicians and militarists, instead of a grave and just muse, whose equal gaze surveys the world and whose hands weigh men’s deeds in a balance. The historian is driven to demand of himself whether history is not indeed an unmitigated curse to humanity, keeping alive the memory of old enmities better dead, teaching that because a thing has been therefore it always shall be; a sort of malignant old man of the sea, clinging to our shoulders and preventing us from moving to new and better things. […]