In the spring of 1913, the powder keg of the Balkans continued tosmoulder after the failure of a peace conference in London inJanuary. Rumours of war were not far away as the question wasaired as to whether or not a national service system would benecessary to supplement the regular armed forces. As the processof replacing horse by motor vehicle continued, and the science ofaeronautics developed, advanced thinkers wondered if futurehostilities would take on unprecedented shape. Meanwhile,industry was rent by strikes, with the antidote of a minimum wagereceiving little support from employers who, like landlords, wereanxious about income tax and national insurance payments. HomeRule for Ireland and Votes for Women were continued slogans alsocausing apprehen-sion, and there were fears of the threat to publicmorality of the cinematograph with its possible ‘perversion intoan agency for pandering to all the lowest instincts of untaughthumanity’.More than eighty years on, the world of spring 1913 seemsindeed to be one we have lost, especially as described by thatestablishment organ, The Times of London, whose issues of earlyApril have been scanned to build up the picture just presented.Those issues will also be used extensively to put forward a viewof the point reached in the development of the study of history,in particular in England, on the eve of the First World War. For,after earlier meetings in The Hague in 1898, Paris in 1900, Romein 1903 and Berlin in 1908, the International Congress ofHistorical Sciences or Studies was now to continue its
deliberations in the hotels and public buildings of Victorian andEdwardian London.16Proceedings began on Thursday, 3 April and, from the generaltone of various speeches, The Times considered that the spirit ofthe Congress was to be one of peace and good will towards men.From all over Europe, from the United States and the BritishDominions, from Chile and Argentina and Japan, the historians ofthe world had come to London, just as in previous years they hadassembled at The Hague and Paris and Rome and Berlin, to meeteach other face to face and discuss the latest results of their severalstudies. But just because they were historians by profession theywere probably better able than most men to take a wide view ofthe meaning of history, and to look beyond the national jealousiesand rivalries of any given moment to the ultimate good of thehuman race. And the delegates who spoke all joined, directly orindirectly, in expressing views of the inestimable value of friendshipbetween nations similar to those put forward in the presidentialaddress of Mr (soon to be Lord) Bryce.17That address began with a hearty welcome, and continued witha comment on the modern expansion of the scope of historicalresearch, especially with regard to the study of primitive man, theearly Mediterranean civilisations, and ‘the backward races stillscattered over the earth’. In view of the fact that his other dutieshad prevented him from following recent movements, Bryce askedpermission to speak rather as a traveller than a student ofmanuscripts or printed books. But his traveller’s observations,illuminated by his wide historical knowledge and sound humanity,were throughout listened to with the deepest interest, in the viewof The Times correspondent who went on to quote two passages inthe spirit of international friendliness characteristic of the Congress:The world is becoming one in an altogether new sense.More than four centuries ago the discovery of Americamarked the first step in the process by which the Europeanraces have now gained dominion over nearly the wholeof the earth. The last great step in that process was thepartition of Africa between three European Powers a littlemore than 20 years ago. Now almost every part of theearth’s surface, except the territories of China and Japan,is either owned or controlled by five or six European races.Eight Great Powers sway the political destinies of the globe
and there are only two other countries that can be thoughtof as likely to enter after a while into the rank of GreatPowers. Similarly, a few European tongues haveoverspread all the continents, except Asia, and even thereit seems probable that these few European tongues willbefore long be learnt and used by the educated classes insuch wise as to bring these classes into touch withEuropean ideas. It is likely that by AD 2000 more than nine-tenths of the human race will be speaking less than 20languages. Already there are practically only four greatreligions in the world. Within a century the minor religionsmay have gone; and possibly only three great faiths willremain, with such accelerated swiftness does change nowmove. Those things which are already strong are growingstronger; those already weak grow weaker and are readyto vanish away.18Those conditions in which the world now finds itself,these closer relations of contact between the great nationsin their transmarine possessions as well as in theirEuropean homes, suggest a final observation. It is this. Oneduty that was always incumbent upon the historian hasnow become a duty of deeper significance and strongerobligation. Truth, and only truth, is our aim. We are boundas historians to examine and record facts without favouror affection to our own nation or to any other. Our commondevotion to truth is what brings us here and unites us inone body divided by no national jealousies, but all of usalike animated by the spirit of scientific investigation. Butthough no other sentiments intrude here, we are only toowell aware that jealousies and misunderstandings do existand from time to time threaten the concord of nations.Seeing that we are, by the work we follow, led to lookfurther back and more widely around than most of ourfellow-citizens can do, are we not as students of historyspecially called upon to do what we can to try to reduceevery source of international ill feeling? As historians, weknow how few wars have been necessary wars and howmuch more harm than good most wars have done. Ashistorians, we know that every great people has had itscharacteristic merits along with its characteristic faults.None is especially blameless—each has rendered its special
services to humanity at large. We have the best reason forknowing how great is the debt each one owes to the other;how essential not only to the material development of each,but also to its intellectual and spiritual advance, is thegreatness and welfare of the others and the commonfriendship of all. May not we and the students of physicalscience, who also labour for knowledge in their own fields,and bow as we do before the august figure of Truth, hopeto become a bond of sympathy between the nations, help-ing each people to feel and appreciate all that is best in theothers, and seeking to point the way to peace and goodwill throughout the world.19Bryce’s respect for ‘the august figure of Truth’ should not bedoubted: indeed, it allows us to observe that his speech laidbare the basic outlook of his generation. This recognised thatthe world was becoming one, but that ‘the backward races stillscattered over the earth’ were dominated by European powers(including, from a linguistic-cultural point of view, the USA).And there was no sense of any loss of confidence or fear for thefuture where ‘things which are already strong are growingstronger’. As we shall soon see, the proceedings of the Congresswere to demonstrate clearly that the expansion of the scope ofhistorical research was taking place in a framework of suchpresuppositions.On the morning of Wednesday, 9 April, after five days ofplenary and sectional meetings, the Congress held its closingsession. The invitation to hold the next Congress at St Petersburgwas unanimously accepted, with the Russian delegates assuringthe committee that every facility would be afforded by theirgovernment for the entry into their country of persons who werenot its subjects.20 In the evening, delegates were entertained inOxford and Cambridge, The Times recording the speech givenby Lord Morley at All Souls College, Oxford. Proposing thetoasts of ‘The King’ and ‘The Foreign Delegates to the Congress’,Lord Morley said that, at any rate in England, the power ofuniversities, and the public schools that fed them, in the workingof other institutions and in moulding both secular andecclesiastical politics—often for darkness as well as light, oftenthe mirror of stolid prejudices and childish conventions—hadbeen immeasurable. Universities, besides imparting special
knowledge, were meant for reason’s refuge and its fortress. Thestanding enemies of reason, in spite of new arms, altered sym-bols, changing masks, were what they had always beeneverywhere.One of the commanding impulses of their era, Lord Morleycontinued, had been nationality, and, as it happened, they neverhad better cause for realising this in its most comprehensive sensethan at the present time. But then another work of their time hadbeen the advance of science, and where nationality divided scienceunited.Respectfully and with all humility, however, Morley urgedhistorians to note that improvisation had far more to do in politicsthan people thought. He was of all men the very last to deny thesupremacy of rational methods as tests of human beings, but inpolitics rationalism needed correction and enrich-ment fromhistory. The plain busy man often asked what was old history tohim. Well, one answer was that in Europe he was born 2,000 yearsold. History mattered more than logic, forces, incidents and thelong tale of consummating circumstance. How often didmiscalculations in the statesman, like narrowness and blunder inthe historian, spring from neglect of the truth that deeper thanmen’s opinions was the sentiment and circumstance by whichopinion was predetermined.21Like Lords Acton and Bryce, Lord Morley was a prominentLiberal, indeed the leader of his party in the House of Lords.Possibly, it was his regular exposure to the cut and thrust of politicsthat made him a shade less optimistic than his peers, recognisingthe existence of both ‘blunders’ and ‘darkness’. However, his faithin history seemed no less great
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