The World War and What was Behind It The Story of the Map of Europe
PREFACE This little volume is the result of the interest shown by pupils, teachers, and the general public in a series of talks on the causes of the great European war which were given by the author in the fall of 1914. The audiences were widely different in character. They included pupils of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, students in high school and normal school, teachers in the public schools, an association of business men, and a convention of boards of education. In every case, the same sentiment was voiced: "If there were only some book which would give us these facts in simple language and illustrate them by maps and charts as you have done!" After searching the market for a book of this sort without success, the author determined to put the subject of his talks into manuscript form. It has been his aim to write in a style which is well within the comprehension of the children in the upper grades and yet is not too juvenile for adult readers. The book deals with the remarkable sequence of events in Europe which made the great war inevitable. Facts are revealed which, so far as the author knows, have not been published in any history to date; facts which had the strongest possible bearing on the outbreak of the war. The average American, whether child or adult, has little
treatment where the surrounding conditions of restraint and careful
nursing are supplemental.
"We have observed that in many instances the fact of the patient being
convinced that he is an hereditary inebriate, has produced beneficial
results. Summoning to his aid all the latent counterbalancing energies
which he has at command, and clothing himself with this armor, he goes
forth to war, throws up the fortifications of physical and mental
restraint, repairs the breaches and inroads of diseased appetite,
regains control of the citadel of the brain, and then, with shouts of
triumph, he unfurls the banner of 'VICTORY!'"
Dr. Wood, of London, in his work on insanity, speaking on the subject of
hereditary inebriety, says:
"Instances are sufficiently familiar, and several have occurred within
my own personal knowledge, where the father, having died at any early
age from the effects of intemperance, has left a son to be brought up by
those who have severely suffered from his excesses, and have therefore
the strongest motives to prevent, if possible, a repetition of such
misery; every pain has been taken to enforce sobriety, and yet,
notwithstanding all precautions, the habits of the father have become
those of the son, who, never having seen him from infancy, could not
have adopted them from imitation. Everything was done to encourage
habits of temperance, but all to no purpose; the seeds of the disease
had begun to germinate; a blind impulse led the doomed individual, by
PREFACE This little volume is the result of the interest shown by pupils, teachers, and the general public in a series of talks on the causes of the great European war which were given by the author in the fall of 1914. The audiences were widely different in character. They included pupils of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, students in high school and normal school, teachers in the public schools, an association of business men, and a convention of boards of education. In every case, the same sentiment was voiced: "If there were only some book which would give us these facts in simple language and illustrate them by maps and charts as you have done!" After searching the market for a book of this sort without success, the author determined to put the subject of his talks into manuscript form. It has been his aim to write in a style which is well within the comprehension of the children in the upper grades and yet is not too juvenile for adult readers. The book deals with the remarkable sequence of events in Europe which made the great war inevitable. Facts are revealed which, so far as the author knows, have not been published in any history to date; facts which had the strongest possible bearing on the outbreak of the war. The average American, whether child or adult, has little