PREFACE 



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This volume is designed to fill a somewhat conspicuous gap in the critical literature 

 hitherto available to the general public concerning contemporary affairs. In a more 

 systematic way than has been attempted before, and for a larger area and range of 

 subjects than are covered by ordinary Year-Books, it puts into convenient shape, as a 

 Review for continuous reading and a Register for occasional reference, what may be 

 described as an international stock-taking, by carefully selected authorities, of the 

 progress of events all over the world and the substantial advances in all branches of 

 knowledge from about 1909-10 up to the beginning of 1913. 



It differs in several notable respects from the familiar type of Year-Book, 



In the first place, it is a " double number." Instead of dealing with the past year 

 only, it shows the status quo at the beginning of 1913, by means of a historical record 

 and review which includes 1911 as well as the whole of 1912, and goes back even earlier 

 so as to make the genesis of the contemporary situation, and the essential facts bear- 

 ing on it, fully comprehensible, 



Secondly, while omitting, as sufficiently accessible already in various widely used 

 Almanacs and Annuals of guide-book character, a good deal of purely formal detail 

 unconnected with the real march of progress, it brings together, on the other . hand, 

 by means of a narrative survey, a mass of information and research on subjects of 

 great practical interest, ignored or quite inadequately dealt with by the ordinary type 

 of Year-Book, but here carefully digested and critically presented! 



Thirdly, it is planned throughout, with the co-operation of contributors specially 

 qualified for the purpose, not only to deal with the salient facts of national progress 

 in different countries, but to approach them, as well as those subjects (e. g. the sciences, 

 arts and industries) which represent a world-movement independently of national 

 or racial divisions, as far as possible from an international standpoint, and not, as 

 in other Year-Books intended for English-speaking readers, from one that is more or 

 less narrowly and disproportionately English or American. 



Fourthly, the BRITANNICA YEAR-BOOK, while complete in itself as a record and 

 survey of the new material of contemporary interest and importance during the period 

 it covers, is deliberately conceived at the same time as having behind it, for all questions 

 on which earlier and more general information is desired, together with subjects on 

 which no substantial addition has been made to the knowledge available in 1910, 

 the Encyclopaedia Britannica itself, the nth edition of which may be regarded as a 

 digest of innumerable Year-Books up to the time of its publication. Each is thus a 

 complement of the other. The YEAR-BOOK not only provides, independently, an 

 encyclopaedic review of purely contemporary additions to history; and knowledge, 

 focussing attention on the new data accruing from 1910 to 1913, but also acts organic- 

 ally as a companion -and pro tanto a corrective to what is admittedly the most compre- 

 hensive and most authoritative of all general works of reference, for which, when pub- 

 lished in 1910-11, all this later material was non-existent. In the latter respect it comes 

 in direct series, though in a different form, with the nth edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, and carries on, under the same auspices, with the same ideals, and with 

 the same corpus of contributors selected and enlarged for adaptation to the circum- 

 stances the same attempt to give accurate and disinterested expression to the best 

 judgment of the civilised world. 



The progress of today is indeed organically related to that of yesterday. The re- 

 cent additions to history and knowledge which the BRITANNICA YE AR-BooK reviews 

 for a limited period have naturally an independent importance, simply as constituting 

 the active movements of prime contemporary interest in 1913, a knowledge of which 

 is essential to any rational understanding of current affairs and opportunities. But 



