An investigation just completed in Europe by Mr. W. G. Shepherd Jeads to the conclusion that the history of the Great War is not being taught to the school-children of three of the principal countries, England, France and Germany. The result of his investigations has been published in "Our World," and therein we see difficulties which probably none but an educationist could have envisaged. In Great Britain no decent text-book is yet available, and the publications on the market are so scrappy and unreliable that they are now banned by school inspectors. France is in very muck the same position, but the case there has assumed a political aspect. In the absence of a politically unbiassed history, the upper classes complained that their children were being taught socialism in the course of their war history, and the socialists that their offspring were learning imperialism. Accordingly the subject has had to be dropped. In Germany the authorities have gone even further, for not only is the history of the war eliminated from all curricula but the old passages in schoolbooks extolling the Kaiser and the Hohenzollern dynasty have been completely eliminated. Later on children will be allowed to learn the dates of principal events and nothing more. There is possibly one advantage in all this delay, that by the time proper books are obtainable we shall have settled the controversy as to who won the war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.