The Outline of History [antikvár]

THE STORY AND AIM OF THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY § 1. How It Came to Be Written. § 2. The Method of Writing the Outline. § 3. Of Certain Omissions and Additions. § 4. The Revision of 1949. § 5. Of Subsequent Editions. § 1 The Outline of History was first written in 1918-1919. It was published in illustrated parts, and it was carefully revised and printed again as a book in 1920. It was again revised very severely and rearranged for a reprint in 1923 (January) ; it was reissued in a revised and much more amply illustrated edition in 1925, and again in 1930 came a quite fresh edition, recast, rewritten in many places, and with much added new matter. This edition was further revised in 1939. There were many reasons to move a writer to attempt a World History in 1918. It was the last, the weariest, most disillusioned year of the first World War. Everywhere there were unwonted privations; everywhere there was mourning. The tale of the dead and mutilated had mounted to many millions. Men felt they had come to a crisis in the world's affairs. They were too weary and heart-sick to consider complicated possibilities. They were not sure whether they were facing a disaster to civilization or the inauguration of a new phase of human association; they saw things with the simplicity of such flat alternatives, and they clung to hope. There was a copious discussion of possible new arrangements of world politics; of world treaties for the abolition of war, of leagues of nations, leagues of peoples. Everyone was "thinking internationally," or at least trying to do so. But there was a widespread realization that everywhere the essentials of the huge problems that had been thrust so suddenly and tragically upon the democracies of the world were insufiRciently understood. "How had these things come about?" they asked, trying to probe behind the disputes about Sarajevo and the Belgian "scrap of paper" to the broader, remoter causes of things. What were the beginnings of this tragic feud across the Rhine? Why had it come to affect the whole world? Why was Japan, which half a century ago had been a romantic, picturesque country, a legend of flimsy art, a comic-opera land as remote almost as another planet, now patrolling the Mediterranean with great