The older historians concentrated more on narrative than on analysis, on the How rather than the Why of history. But now, for several generations, Why has been regarded as a more important question than How. It is, of course, a more important question. But it cannot be answered until How is established. The careful, thorough and accurate answer to the question How should take the historian a long way towards answering the question Why; but for this purpose narrative history must be written with depth and reflection, thought through stage by stage, and recorded comprehensively and with unremitting attention to chronology. As long as this narrative aspect of history is neglected, as long as the How is imperfectly apprehended, that answers given to the question Why will be imperfect. There will be (indeed, there is) much learned putting of carts before horses and offering of abtruse explanations for sequences of events which present no problem at all if the historic landscape is looked at as a whole and not divided into unnatural sections. No development in history is self-contained or self-explanatory, and though specialization is essential for learning it is fatal to understanding. General history stands both at the beginning and at the end of all questions.

I have been told that to write only how things happened is to abdicate the historian’s function, which should be to draw conclusions and explain processes. But are we to presume that no one but ourselves is capable of making deductions from facts? Is not the intelligent reader of history, like the intelligent reader of poetry or novels, able to take the points for himself, without underlining, repetition, and summing up? ‘Work it out for yourself’ is the tacit message of most creative writers to their readers. Why then should the historian assume that his readers alone have too little imagination, perception and responsive power to take the challenge? I cannot feel that it is the function of the historian to do all the thinking for his public. If history is educational, it must be an education in thinking not merely remembering.