HISTORY STUDY

Hokitika Guardian, 21 February 1929, Page 7

HISTORY STUDY

Dr vS'choiclicld, the Parliamentary Librarian and keeper of the Dominion archives, in an excellent address reported in the “Star” recently, gave students of history some useful advice as to llio gathering of material. Very rightly he gave high value to diaries and letters written at the time important events occurred, and to contemporary newspaper narratives. Rut his condemnation of the recollections o'f pioneers and veterans, memories which lie said imparted “an entirely wrong perspective to the study of our history,” was so sweeping that it seems to me to call for some qualification and criticism.

Some oral and written reminiscences are obviously full of errors. In tho course of collecting and co-ordinating historical material in New Zealand I have found that many statements ic g.-rding the .Maori wars, 'tor ’instance, were camp gossip. Some of these stories persist to-day. Rut many narratives obtained from those who shared in great historical events are ol tho highest importance and value; they 'Humiliate and elucidate episodes which would remain imperfectly explained. ..(•urge .Macaulay Trevelyan, the historian, discussed this point in the prefine to his work ‘‘Garibaldi and the Thousand.”’ Oral evidence, he said, had its value. “ You cannot crossexamine a hook or manuscript; that is tho weakness of written evidence, which the presence of oral evidence rectifies to some degree.”

Documentary evidence is not always so reliable as it may appear. It is not safe, for example, to rely implicitly on the official dispatches written by military commanders in New Zealand wars. Sometimes they minimised reverses, sometimes they failed to explain the exact cause of failure. Hurriedlywritten dispatches, too, wore necessarily without data regarding the ot?ie» side. It is only from viva voca examinations that one has been able, while there were still living participants and eye witnesses, to give complete accounts of important episodes. History written wholly 'from documents would he incomplete without the lile and colour that personal narratives can supply, at any rate such a history as the story of events since Now Zealand fiecame a British colony.

Newspaper files are a geld mine of material for the historian and the story writer. But newspaper narratives, like old colonists’ reminiscences, must not always lie accepted on their suiLice value. They are subject to correction in the light of later information. University students are being encouraged to take New Zealand history episodes or periods as subjects 'lor theses. The interest thus aroused and the research that the subject necessitates make the task of writing a thesis a fascinating kind of exploration. Elio study of local history is found a profitaide beginning. A graduate lately dismissed with me his choice of a subject for a. thesis. He had selected the place in which he lived, an old whaling settlemontment on the South Island coast. Working back through books and newspaper files lie had gathered a great mass .'f facts and was surprised at the volume and variety of historical hap"enings in his dsitrict. The one thing lie regretted was that all the ” human documents ” had passed on ; he has come on the scene just a few years too late. Yes, there was one other cause lor regret. Incredible as it may scorn to newspaper people and to all who have business to do with newspapers, he found on inquiry that the little local paper, long as it had boon ost-a Misled, did not trouble to keep a. file ol itselt. Its worries about the past! 'I lie present, apparently, was sufficient problem. Diaries, letters, newspaper tiles, fjicial records, hooks, all come into the historian’s sifting not. But a wise student will not despise word-of-mouth r<Mninis"<:*it< (*s. f l lioro sire nismy niosins of checking and cross-examining suJi witnesses after they have told their talcs that give the human touch to records of the past. if.C.