108 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



exploitation was to the drier, and for tlie most part therefore to the higher- 

 lying, districts, oases and natural clearings in the dense overgrowth which 

 is now so hard to reconstruct even in a trained imagination. Fortunately 

 in our timbered hedgerows, at all events, the principal elements of that 

 ancient regime remain accessible to many of us, and English taste in the 

 treatment of urban open spaces — for example in the London parks and 

 squares — makes this feature in ancient landscape more familiar still. 

 Characteristic data, that is, are still available for the reconstruction of 

 that ' unspoiled countryside ' for each principal period of national history, 

 without which the familiar episodes of King Alfred at Athelney, Hereward 

 in the Isle of Ely, the parkland fates of King Edmund and William Rufus 

 lose much of their historic value, because they are bereft of their geo- 

 graphical setting. 



In many parts of the country, I am gladly aware, I should be preaching 

 to the converted if I were to elaborate this kind of correlation between 

 ancient geographical conditions and ancient life. Whether the geographer 

 or the historian takes the initiative in each instance seems to me to be 

 matter of indifference, provided first that the other colleague responds ; 

 and provided also that initiative, response and collaboration occur as 

 publicly, frankly and naturally as educational good manners allow. Few 

 things are so stimulating to a class or a whole schoolful of pupils as to 

 realise that the staff too is a team ; that the divisions between aspects 

 of knowledge are as arbitrary and artificial as the segregation of children 

 into classes ; that learning permeates wherever there is an observant eye 

 or an attentive ear ; that information sought and found sinks deepest 

 and lasts longest. 



If, then, it be our main object in teaching our national history in our 

 schools, to bring up citizens-to-be with some appreciation of historical 

 perspective, we cannot forgo that alternative line of approach which 

 inquires what the homeland was, before it was made homelike as we 

 know it, and what its part has been in shaping the careers and the outlook 

 of our people in the past. This, in its simplest illustration, is what I mean 

 by the function of ancient geography in modern education ; and it will 

 be seen that there is no phase of instruction so ' primary ' or so ' advanced ' 

 that it can be regarded as superfluous or inopportune. 



But it would be a very imperfect preparation for citizenship which 

 included the history of British people only ; for the appreciation of 

 our own literature, or for the right enjoyment of leisure — as Greek 

 educators called it — if the mental horizon so lay as to reveal no drama 

 before Shakespeare, no epic before Milton, no history before Froissart or 

 Clarendon. Great as our national literature is, it owes much of its 

 greatness and originality to the fact that it has been so apt to learn ; that 

 it has taken into its own texture so much of the best from other great 

 literatures, from Israel, from Greece and Rome. With our history it is 

 the same. It stands embraced by the history of Europe, and sustained 

 on the history of the Mediterranean world and the Nearer East. We 

 cannot afford to read it or to teach it by itself. It presumes for its 

 interpretation that the world is wider than these islands and older than 

 modern history. If we would see life truly we must needs see it 

 whole. 



