A New Tendency in English Historical Study

In a democratic state such as ours the study of the country's political traditions in relation with other states should no longer be reserved for a limited and privileged class, but on the contrary facilities should be provided for aI1 those who have the dignity and greatness of their country at heart."NE interesting 'development in English historical study since the war is the increased attention being paid to foreign politics.English historians of the past, famous many of them for their histories of England, for constitutional history, and for biographies of historical characters, have as a rule paid singularly little attention to the important branch of foreign relations and their connection with the internal politics of the nation.A reason no doubt for this is to be found in the comparative isolation of Great Britain in European politics.The long domination of Palmerston in the sphere of foreign affairs had taught Englishmen to regard their own country as standing haughtily outside the European tribe of nations, pursuing its own way regardless of their feelings and ambitions, and paying attention to them only when they happened to cross its path.This attitude of mind has long ceased to represent the facts, if it ever really represented them, even in Palmerston's day.One of the chief services of Disraeli, Salisbury, and Lord Rosebery was to awaken in the people a sense of the country's intimate connection with the politics of their neighbours across the channel, and by a strange irony of fate Gladstone himself, the last real survivor of the Palmerstonian policy of isolation, was forced during his later ministries to devote an inordinate amount of attention to foreign politics.But even so it was hard to persuade the Englishman that a serious study of foreign affairs was important to him politically.When France or Germany interfered with his interests, he could be aroused to an indignant curiosity as to their aims and motives; but to study the more comprehensive causes of European unrest was entirely alien to his

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