TO CLIO

The need for an American historian who understands the spirit of the country is defined by Bernard Fay in the current Scribners. He points out that "America. . .prey to a tremendous upheaval and laboring under the shock of events which make inoperative an exact sense of her mission and her national aims, needs a first rate instruction in history at once." Other countries have various forces which contribute to national unity, such as the language in France and the traditions of literature and art in Germany; but America lacks these. History has taken that position in this country, according to Professor Fay because of its coherence, its excellent documentation, and its unusual symbolism. The hardness of colonial life and later that of the frontiers, has left a heritage of realism and a distrust of imagination. Hence is the desire of "every American citizen" to have a "clear consciousness of his 'Americanism'."

Three schools of historians have grown up as the result of this call, Professor Fay states: the "Outline" history, the realistic or "debunking" history, and the history based on an economic and materialistic analysis. The first was unsatisfactory because of its superficiality, the second because its explanation is wholly destructive. The last type has been widely accepted, but as Professor Fay says, "It might constitute a history of things American, but it is not a history of the American people. . . and it fails to convince." America, says Professor Fay, requires an historian like Turner. His country "interested him so profoundly, he had tried so hard to understand her, to perceive her, and to explain her, that in the process he reached a plane of moral nobility and intellectual clarity higher than that on which his contemporaries take their stand."

Professor Fay's article deals with a profound reality in American life. America is yearning for a guiding aim, for something to strive after; and the historian is in a good position to give the answer to that desire. Today's world is one that has been stripped of shams and pretenses; one that has seen the veil torn away from much that passed for idealism--and from much that was idealism. This country is weary of destruction; it desires rebuilding and most of all a system of ideals. The American believes as he has always believed in his institutions and his history, and no one today can clarify his national consciousness and define the purposes of his nation better than the historian.