[EDITOR'S NOTE. In the nineteen-twenties the study of Spanish underwent a heavy barrage of attacks from uninformed or prejudiced men, some of whom held high places in the educationist world. Such statements as "the study of Spanish is a goldbrick"; "Spanish is of no more value than Hottentot or Choctaw"; "Spanish should be studied only for commercial reasons, and it isn't of much use even there"; "Spain has no culture worthy of the name"; "Spain has produced only one writer"; and other similar misstatements were typical of the methods employed. One naive educationist critic used as an argument the "fact" that "no one" (i.e., he himself) "had ever heard of any Spanish writer but Cervantes"; ergo, no other Spanish writer of importance had ever existed! Another gathered "statistics" on the relative importance of the various literatures of the world, these "statistics" being based on the number of volumes from the respective literatures published-up to that time-in "Everyman's Library." ('This of course was "evidence" of their relative importance-in the eyes of this practitioner of the "science" of Education.) The obvious stupidity of such statements did not prevent their receiving too wide acceptance. (Some of them, in fact, are still current among uninformed school people today.) They were delivered with all the "authority" of the pontificating educational pundit who-according to a more broadly educated Professor of Education-is "frequently in error but never in doubt." It will always be a source of pride among Hispanists that men who really knew what they were talking about-President Nicholas Murray Butler, Dr. Leo S. Rowe, Dr. Ralph Adams Cram, and many other scholars, historians, and public men-were quick to spring to the defense of maligned Hispanic culture and the Spanish and Portuguese languages. One of the most eminent and ablest of these was the late William R. Shepherd, Seth Low Professor of History in Columbia University, one of whose vigorous and informative papers is reprinted herewith. Except in certain minor details, it is just as effective, stimulating, timely, and interesting today as it was twenty years ago. We are glad to reproduce it here, in the belief that it will inspire and help to sustain the morale of the Spanish and Portuguese teachers of today in the face of occasional attacks by educational isolationists and obscurantists of the present day, fortunately fewer in number--or at least less "brash" and vocal about their ignorance-than those of the nineteentwenties. HENRY GRATTAN DOYLE.]