Many of our national ideals have their roots deep down in English history.  Not long ago I heard a seventh-grade class discussing the Magna Charta.  It was a class in American history, and yet the events that the pupils had been studying occurred three centuries before the discovery of America.  They had become familiar with the long list of abuses that led to the granting of the charter.  They could tell very glibly what this great document did for the English people.  They traced in detail the subsequent events that led to the establishment of the House of Commons.  All this was American history just as truly as if the events described had occurred on American soil.  They were gaining an appreciation of one of the most fundamental of our national ideals,—­the ideal of popular government.  And not only that, but they were studying popular government in its simplest form, uncomplicated by the innumerable details and the elaborate organizations which characterize popular government to-day.

And when these pupils come to the time when this ideal of self-government was transplanted to American soil, they will be ready to trace with intelligence the changes that it took on.  They will appreciate the marked influence which geographical conditions exert in shaping national standards of action.  How richly American history reveals and illustrates this influence we are only just now beginning to appreciate.  The French and the English colonists developed different types of national character partly because they were placed under different geographical conditions.  The St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes gave the French an easy means of access into the vast interior of the continent, and provided innumerable temptations to exploitation rather than a few incentives to development.  Where the French influence was dispersed over a wide territory, the English influence was concentrated.  As a consequence, the English energy went to the development of resources that were none too abundant, and to the establishment of permanent institutions that would conserve these resources.  The barrier of the Appalachians hemmed them in,—­three hundred miles of alternate ridge and valley kept them from the West until they were numerically able to settle rather than to exploit this country.  Not a little credit for the ultimate English domination of the continent must be given to these geographical conditions.

But geography does not tell the whole story.  The French colonists differed from the English colonists from the outset in standards of conduct.  They had brought with them the principle of paternalism, and, in time of trouble, they looked to France for support.  The English colonists brought with them the principle of self-reliance and, in time of trouble, they looked only to themselves.  And so the old English ideals had a new birth and a broader field of application on American soil.  There is nothing finer in our country’s history than the attitude