FABLE RAMPANT

The teacher of American history must sacrifice truth to the spreading of patriotic myth, according to Robert L. Joyce, a New Jersey high school instructor. In this way and no other, he says can such traditions be evoked as will make the United States a homogeneous nation. Mr. Joyce believes that the disillusionment of the child brought up on myth-history is unimportant to the country, and will have no permanently evil effect on the patriotism so inculcated.

The theory is even more distasteful than it is illogical. There can be little value in a patriotism inspired by the perversion of truth. It must lead to misunderstanding between those who retain their illusions and those who eventually shake them off. In shutting the eyes of the semi-educated to the realities of the past, a false view of history prevents them from benefiting from human experience.

Mr. Joyce's brand of patriotism would exaggerate that self-complacency which often makes the United States unpopular. The unbalanced patriotism inspired by the teaching of myth as history is necessarily intolerant, in peace as well as in war and blind prejudice in the present is the product of false interpretations of history. America, in following the precepts of Mr. Joyce, would fool no one but itself; but as Bertrand Russell insists, its monstrous self-deception would become a menace to international civilization. If democracy is to survive as a stable form of government, it must be guided by an impartial examination of the past and learn to discard the false, if flattering, fabrication of jingoistic historians.