The Outline of History [antikvár]

THE STORY AND AIM OF THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY § 1. H010 it Game to be Written. § 3. Of Certain Omissions and § 2. The Method of Writing the Additions. Outline. §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, which is still on sale, and now this again is a quite fresh edition, recast, rewritten in many places, and with much added new matter. 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 Great 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 trjdng 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 insufficiently 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