If, therefore,
there are vested interests, moral or material, to be maintained, history
is, of all the sciences or arts, that one most likely to suffer at the
hands of those connected with such interests. Even where the truth will
be of advantage to those interests, they are afraid of it, because the
thorough discussion of it will involve the presentation of views
disadvantageous to privilege.
Where, as is much more commonly the case (for vested interests, moral or
material, are unreasoning and selfish things), the truth would certainly
offend them, they are the more determined to prevent its appearance.
But of all vested interests none deal with such assured incomes, none
are so immune by influence and tradition as the Universities.
Now, if the rich man has no temptation by way of popular fame, and the
poor man no opportunity for endowment, in any branch of letters, there
remains but a third form of support, and that is the support of the
buying public. And the public will not buy.
I will suppose the case of a popular novelist, who in a few months shall
write, not an historical novel, but a piece of so-called history. He
shall call it, for instance, "England's Heroes." Before you tell me his
name, or what he has written, I can tell you here and now what he will
write on any number of points. He will call Hastings Senlac. In the
Battle of Hastings he will make out Harold to be the head of a highly
patriotic nation called the "Anglo-Saxons"; they shall be desperately
defending themselves against certain French-speaking Scandinavians
called Normans.
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