THE TEACHING OF HISTORY.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 190, 12 February 1943, Page 3

THE TEACHING OF HISTORY.

Sir,-In referring to the history paper for the 1942 Entrance Examination "D.H.H." says that "our universities are still bent on teaching history along narrow nationalistic lines." I would go further and add that our universities lack diligence in their search for historical. accuracy. Take the Napoleonic period. The myth and contradiction woven round those troublous days by partisan writers have no parallel in military history. And as Dryden says: "A falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity." Take, for instance, Trafalgar and Waterloo. Our historians, practically without exception, inform us that Trafalgar was a "great and glorious victory," and stress the fact that the enemy had 33 ships of the line against our 27; but they fail to tell us that in every other single respect the advantages were overwhelmingly in our favour. No mention is made of the fact that the enemy ships were in a deplorable state of inefficiency, ' many of the Spanish vessels being absolutely unseaworthy and manned by the riff-raff of the maritime towns of the peninsula. The result of the fight was a foregone conclusion, the enemy having about as much chance of winning as the writer would have in a bout of fisticuffs with Joe Louis. Trafalgar was a massacre. Villeneuve and his officers and men knew they were going to certain destruction, but Napoleon’s orders had to be obeyed. Then take Waterloo, the importance of which is perhaps the biggest illusion in military history. At Waterloo Napoleon encountered only the advance guard of the allied army, but with the sole exception of Maxwell no other English historian makes that admission. Napoleon’s success at Waterloo would have made no difference whatever to the ultimate result of the campaign. Within a week’s march of the scene of hostilities 175,000 Russians and 200,000 Austrians were advancing with all speed. We are not told this, but constantly reminded that at Waterloo "the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance," and that the "fate of the world depended upon the issues of a moment." Pretty sentiment, but totally at variance with the truth.

J.A.

WALSH

(Pahiatua).