that story is told without proof by one of John's worst enemies, in a
mass of other accusations many of which can be proved to be false.

Again, I turn to an Oxford History of the French Revolution, and I find
the remark that the massacres of September were organized by the men
from Marseilles. They were not organized by the men from Marseilles. The
men from Marseilles had nothing to do with them, and the fact has been
public property since the publication of Pollio and Marcel's monograph
twenty years ago.

What criterion can the ordinary reader choose when he is confronted by
difficulties of this sort? I will suggest to him one which seems to me
by far the most valuable. It is the reading of firsthand authorities. It
is all a matter of habit. When the original authorities upon which
history is based were difficult to get at, when few of those in foreign
tongues had been translated, and when those that had been published were
published in the most expensive form, the ordinary reader had to depend
upon an historian who would summarize for him the reading of another.
The ordinary reader was compelled to read secondary history or none. Now
secondary history is among the most valuable of literary efforts; where
evidence is slight, the judgment of an historian who knows from other
reading the general character of the period, is most valuable. Where
evidence is abundant, and therefore confusing, the historian used to the
selection and weighing of it performs a most valuable function. Still,
the reader who is not acquainted with original authorities does not
really know history and is at the mercy of whatever myth or tradition
may be handed to him in print.

We should remember that today, even in England, original authorities are
quite easy to get at. Two little books, for instance, occur to me out of