DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 183 



Institution's publications, to which the translations would add two 

 more. All but about 50,000 words of this material had been trans- 

 lated into English by the end of September. The work of translating 

 will soon be completed. That of editing the documents and writing 

 the introductions for the several groups into which they have been di- 

 vided has been held back by two removals on Dr. Hackett's part, two 

 attacks of illness, and the imposition of new duties at the University 

 of Texas from which he could not escape. It will, however, not be 

 very long before the first half of this work will be finished, an amount 

 sufficient to constitute two volumes of print. 



PLANS FOR 1920. 



The work of the National Board for Historical Service is ended, 

 and the Department will no longer feel obliged to devote strength and 

 time and money to work called for by the immediate exigencies of 

 warfare, but its remoter consequences will permanently continue to 

 affect our work. All historical work hereafter carried on will feel the 

 impress of the great war and the resulting social upheaval, just as the 

 historical work of the three generations preceding has felt the impress 

 of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conflicts. Just what 

 readjustments or new Hnes of work this should suggest in the case of an 

 organization occupied solely with the raw materials of history, with 

 searching for the original documents, making them accessible to scholars, 

 and printing some of them, is a question so grave and one requiring 

 so dehberate consideration that the next year may well be devoted 

 to thought and planning on this subject, to collecting information and 

 formulating proposals, without attempting now to make detailed or 

 definite suggestions as to what should be undertaken under the new 

 conditions of the historical and the general world. In brief, it must 

 be our desire that the Department shall do whatever will be most 

 useful to the advancement of historical science in America, that it 

 shall so take cognizance of the work of other historical agencies as to 

 avoid doing what has been or is likely to be abundantly well taken care 

 of by others, and that it shall do its part in any projects of international 

 cooperation which will not have the nature of "entangfing alliances." 

 Always the endeavor will be made to keep in mind the great responsi- 

 bihties which are placed on American scholarship by the results of a 

 war which has signally impaired the sources by which scholarly enter- 

 prises in Europe have been sustained, while it has left American 

 resources, relatively speaking, almost untouched. 



REPORTS. AIDS, AND GUIDES. 



It is hoped that Mr. van Laer's report on the materials for American 

 history in Dutch archives, based on his recent expedition, will be 

 presented during the earlier part of the year, and that of Mr. Bell 

 on the West Indian papers in the Pubhc Record Office. 



