Had Bryce died on his fiftieth birthday, 10 May 1888, he would have been known as the author of The Holy Roman Empire, as a distinguished Regius Professor of Civil Law and as a respectable but undistinguished Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The record would have been impressive enough but the content of achievement would have been orthodox – such as might be paralleled by many an academic liberal, British or European. Within a few months, however, Bryce broke into a new field and established a reputation of quite another order, with the appearance in December of The American Commortwealth, The book was more than a notable study of American institutions; it marked the recognition by a European mind of the first order of the importance and interest of the government, politics and manner of life of the contemporary United States. Tocqueville had paid such a tribute, a half-century earlier, but his example had not been followed up. Moreover, penetrating as his study was, as an analysis and a prophecy, one element was lacking in his tribute – observation.

In early issues of the Bulletin (2, pp. 7–14; 3, pp. 8–25; 4, PP. 16–18), Mr. Marcus Cunliffe published notes on the teaching of American history and literature in Great Britain. The aim of these informal surveys was to give a picture of the progress which had been made by these subjects in British universities and schools. After history and literature, it was natural that he should turn his attention to the consideration that is given in Great Britain, to the teaching of American government and politics. The notes which he collected were followed by an appeal for information about American government and politics in British universities and schools in the last two Bulletins. It was hoped that enough material might be acquired in this way to enable a full issue of the Bulletin to be devoted to this subject.

John Howard Whitehouse, late Warden of Bembridge School, Isle of Wight, has a right to be considered one of the pioneers of Anglo-American understanding in education. It was his aim, through his opportunities as a member of Parliament from 1910 to 1918 and subsequently as Warden of Bembridge School in the Isle of Wight (a position he held until his death in September 1955), to foster the mutual understanding of Great Britain and the United States of America. He hoped to achieve this aim by influencing the youth of both countries through teaching them about each other's ways of life.

I do not know how many ways of teaching American literature there are, but I can think of at least three. One can accept it as a literature in its own right and teach it for its moral and aesthetic values; one can regard it as worthy only of being treated as part of American intellectual history, or as an illustration of American life and thought; or one can make some compromise between these two methods. I should like, at the outset, to examine the practicability of the first method. George Bernard Shaw said once that an Englishman “does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.” If, therefore, I propose a principle for the teaching of Amerioan literature, it will perhaps be understood that, although I am not exactly announcing my deliberate perfidy, I am at least acknowledging that I am aware that the current frame of mind in Britain would suggest a certain strategy.

Even today it is still possible, by the help of some such accident as censorship, for a good book actually to become widely read. This is, of course, precisely what happened to Jurgen in 1920. Yet it is tempting to believe that Jurgen was released primarily because, as Judge Charles C. Nott observed when recommending the jury to acquit the defendants, very few readers would be capable of understanding it. There seems little doubt that Cabell was suppressed for what he didn't say and exalted for what he didn't mean. This may be an inevitable penalty for creating what is, in effect, a spiritual synthesis in an age of intellectual analysis. But the wheel must turn, and with Edward Wagenknecht's fuller comprehension in his Cavalcade of the American Novel (1952) and Edmund Wilson's article in the New Yorker in April, 1956, perhaps we are now ready to honour Vernon Louis Parrington's description (in The Pacific Review of 1921) of Cabell as: