Book Description

Excerpt from The Book of History, Vol. 16: The World's Greatest War; From the Outbreak of the War to the Treaty of Versailles; With More Than 1, 000 Illustrations; The Causes of the War, the Event of 1914-1915 Including Summary When the Great War broke out in Europe more than six years ago we promised our patrons that we would present to them a volume containing the story of the contest. At that time no one foresaw the duration, the intensity, or the extent of the conflict and certainly no one dreamed that almost the whole world would become involved. Quite evidently no single volume can describe adequately such a struggle of nations. Therefore the history which we now offer is more than three times the length of the narrative planned six years ago. The delay in publication has been unavoidable. We were unwilling to offer our readers a hasty sketch made up from newspaper accounts which, however interesting, could have neither the accuracy nor the balance of true history. Such a course would have been entirely contrary to our policy and out of harmony with the other volumes of our great Book of History, which this History of the World's Greatest War now adequately completes. Though our editorial staff collected, studied, and filed all the accounts, reports and documents as they appeared, actual writing was not begun until long after the Armistice was signed. Only when the end of the war brought to light hundreds of secret documents, when the final reports of the military and naval officers were published, and the leaders, civil and military, of all the nations began writing to explain, to justify or to excuse their actions, did it become possible to prepare a history of permanent value. The contributors to the history form an unusual group drawn from Europe, Canada, and the United States. Some were distinguished participants in the military or naval actions; others held high positions as civilians, while still others are able students and writers of history. Their contributions, moreover, are not a series of unrelated essays as so often happens in works by a number of authors. All the contributors have co-operated most generously in carrying out the general plan worked out by the incessant labor of the Editor-in-Chief, - himself a well-known historian, - who has welded their contributions into a well-balanced and harmonious whole. The thousand and more illustrations and maps add immense value to the text. Through our connections in Europe we have been able to secure many rare photographs not before published on this side of the Atlantic and some which have not been published at all. The official photographs of the leading nations have been freely used, and many have come from daring civilian photographers who risked their lives to secure the coveted pictures. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.