CHAUVINISM
ingenuous student is that the whole English nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by the courage and conduct of the colonists:
"When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took command, and beat the French terribly. . . . Abercrombie's defeat was the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of brilliant victories followed. . . . By the energy, courage, and patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had, throughout, borne the brunt of the conflict."
The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, but will certainly despise her.
Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee of the New England History Teachers' Association published in the Educational Review for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the results as follows:
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