322

(3) TANNENBERG 345

(4) THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT 365

INTRODUCTION.

It is the object of this book, and those which will succeed it in the
same series, to put before the reader the main lines of the European
War as it proceeds. Each such part must necessarily be completed and
issued some little time after the events to which it relates have
passed into history. The present first, or introductory volume, which
is a preface to the whole, covers no more than the outbreak of
hostilities, and is chiefly concerned with an examination of the
historical causes which produced the conflict, an estimate of the
comparative strength of the various combatants, and a description of
the first few days during which these combatants took up their
positions and suffered the first great shocks of the campaigns in East
and West.

But in order to serve as an introduction to the remainder of the
series, it is necessary that the plan upon which these books are to
be constructed should be clearly explained.

There is no intention of giving in detail and with numerous exact maps
the progress of the campaigns. Still less does the writer propose to
examine disputed points of detail, or to enumerate the units employed
over that vast field. His object is to make clear, as far as he is
able, those great outlines of the business which too commonly escape
the general reader.

This war is the largest and the weightiest historical incident which
Europe has known for many centuries. It will surely determine the
future of Europe, and in particular the future of this country. Yet
the comprehension of its movements is difficult to any one not
acquainted with the technical language and the special study of
military history; and the reading of the telegrams day by day, even
though it be accompanied by the criticisms of the military experts in
the newspapers, leaves the mass of men with a most confused conception
of what happened and why it happened.

Now, it is possible, by greatly simplifying maps, by further
simplifying these into clear diagrams, still more by emphasizing what
is essential and by deliberately omitting a crowd of details--by
showing first the framework, as it were, of any principal movement,
and then completing that framework with the necessary furniture of
analysed record--to give any one a conception both of what happened
and