HOW TO WRITE HISTORY SIR, Mr. Igor Vinogradoff has missed
the whole point of Mr. William Gerhardi's historical biography, The Romanovs, in his statement that Mr. Gerhardi's history is " irrelevant." Mr. Vinogradoff's historical associations, having regard to his ante- cedents, are no doubt of the very stereotyped version. His complaint,. in fact, boils down to Mr. Gerhardi not seeing eye to eye with him in regard to the orthodox dogma drummed traditionally into Professor Paul Vinogradoff in the course of his childhood and youth in Imperial Russia, expanded along the same grooves during his professorship, and no doubt drummed into his son.
It is a common trick of the stereotyped historian to dispute the " facts " of any intruder into his own field ; and Mr. Gerhardi's freshness and originality must be particularly gall- ing. A little reflection will convince any student of history that there are indeed very few facts which cannot be dis- puted—dates, at most. would fall into that category.
All causes, consequences, appraisals of character are matters of interpretation and opinion. It is unreasonable to describe a new approach to history as either " irrelevant " or " dispro- portionate." To the conventional historian everything is irrele- vant except his own convention ; nothing important except the extension of territory and empire of the particular nation under review. Mr. Gerhardi has made it abundantly, and, indeed, wittily, clear that he does not consider such childish considera- tions which impress the conventional historian as at all im-
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