Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/138

 teaching of what some of us now piously believe with reference to this feature of history; just as a censorship law of today, if it included in its scope the Civil War, would condemn the teaching of some things which nearly one-half the voters of Wisconsin sincerely believed in 1864. "Time is the great sifter and winnower of truth," and we must consent to leave these matters to the investigators of our grandchildren's generation. Yet the gravest danger to be feared from the law we are now discussing lies in the psychological probability that every second man's opinion of a given history will be based not on what the author says about the Revolution, or the Constitution, or the War of 1812, but on what he says about the recent war and the League of Nations. In other words, the reader who is prejudiced against an author on account of his last chapter, which is almost sure to be unsatisfactory to many, will find the first, the middle, and all other chapters reeking with faults, and this even while personally he may be unconscious of having imbibed a prejudice at all.

There is a possibility that, as an engine for expelling books now used, the law will become a dead letter, first, because it may prove unexpectedly difficult for a dissatisfied citizen to persuade four others to act with him in making complaint, which however is not probable; second, because of the clamor of those in the district who are not keen for or against the book, but who realize that if it is thrown out all old copies will be worthless and they will have to pay for new books at the opening of the next school year; third, because the first cases brought may go against the complainants and discourage others from multiplying complaints. But, the popular psychology being what it is, there is an equal chance that the law may foster a widespread disposition to attack history books, geography books, civics books, and even readers; that it may keep educational matters in a state of turmoil, engendering much social