Herbert Butterfield

"A brilliant young Cambridge historian, Mr. Butterfield, in a recent book called The Whig Interpretation of History, has exposed and denounced this use of history for partisan purposes. As his title indicates, he had chosen for special chastisement that view of history which sees it working out steadily towards political freedom, constitutional government, and the Protestant religion. Why Mr. Butterfield has chosen to flog this particularly dead horse at this particular moment in the post mortem I do not know. For if there has been, and is, a Whig and Protestant view of history, there has been, and is, a not less vicious Tory and Communist and Popish and Atheistic twisting of history; and I refuse, as a Protestant Whig, to have this particular vice attributed solely or chiefly to me. I have not the least intention of bearing the sins of sinners even more sinful than myself. Be that as it may, Mr. Butterfield's essay is useful as a warning against attempts to get the wrong sort of witness from history."

"He hammers away on the importance of his message so incessantly that it loses something of its persuasiveness, and becomes rather a prophetic message for the present than a lesson drawn from a spacious survey of the past."