"G. H. Hardy in his apology for pure mathematics placed high among his arguments that the subject was "harmless". I can – alas – make no such plea for history. The correct use of historical study may be debatable, but the consequences of its abuse have been made plain for all the world to see. The propagandist use of history in the Germany of yesterday, in the Russia of today, is a fact of incalculable importance to the future fate of the world. An ignorance of history inviting its fabrications by the unscrupulous cannot be regarded simply as an innocuous academic failure. It has affected all our lives. It has led directly to Belsen and Buchenwald and Katyn Wood. It has contributed its full share to two major European disasters."
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'The Seamless Robe: An Historian's Apology', in Time and the Hour: Some Collected Papers of David C. Douglas (1977), p. 14
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David C. Douglas
1898 – 1982
David Charles Douglas (1898–1982) was a historian of the Norman period at the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford.
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