The outline of history I. (töredék) [antikvár]

H heSTORYand aimof theOUTLINEHISTORYTHE 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), and now this again is a quite fresh edition, recast, rewritten in many places, and with much added new matter. The original illustrated issue was produced in the period of scarcity and disorganization that immediately followed the war ; this new photogravure edition will be much more abundantly illustrated. It will be, in the fullest sense § of the words, a pictorial world- ^ history.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 "thirk'ing internationally," or at least trying to do so. But there was a wide-11.How it Came to be Written2.The Method of Writing the Outline J. Of Certain Omissions and Additionsspread 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 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 battleships ? Why had the Tsardom vanished like a dream ? What in truth was Turkey ? Why was Constantinople so important in the world ? What was an Empire ? How had Empires begun ? What had converted Germany from a diversity of little states into one aggressive will and power, and put the fear of German energy into half mankind ?Men and women tried to recall the narrow history teaching of their brief schooldays and found an uninspiring and partially forgotten list of national kings or presidents. They tried to read about these matters, and found an endless wilderness of books. They had been taught history, they found, in nationalist blinkers, ignoring every country but their own, and now they were turned out into a blaze. It was extraordinarily difficult for them to determine the relative values of the matters under