Points of Friction
years, as the case may be, and emerge with a misunderstanding of their own country, and a comprehensive ignorance of all others. They say, "I don't know any history," as casually and as unconcernedly as they might say, "I don't know any chemistry," or "I don't know metaphysics." A smiling young freshman in the most scholarly of women's colleges told me that she had been conditioned because she knew nothing about the Reformation.
"You mean,—" I began questioningly.
"I mean just what I say," she interrupted. "I didn't know what it was, or where it was, or who had anything to do with it."
I said I didn't wonder she had come to grief. The Reformation was something of an episode. And I asked myself wistfully how it happened she had ever managed to escape it. When I was a little schoolgirl, a pious Roman Catholic
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