SUMMARY
In his public lecture delivered in 1943 at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and addressed to the Conference of Headmistresses Association of the East, Hans Kohn examines the general question of the place of history in liberal arts education. However, the core of his lecture is occupied with an attempt to explain the contemporaneous crisis of World War II and to chart the promises and dangers of an awakened sense of identity and nationalism in the situation of the war. The lecture includes a reflection on the arch of crisis from World War I and hopes for democracy through World War II, as well as the need to defend democracy against the odds of modern times.