PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 



It has been a great surprise and also a great grati- 

 fication to the author to see the first edition of this 

 volume exhausted within less than two years since its 

 appearance in complete form. The gratification has 

 come especially because of the opportunity thus 

 afforded of revision, improvement in style, and cor- 

 rection of the many inaccuracies which the first edition 

 contained, excusable only by the manner in which 

 (as explained in the preface of the first edition) the 

 volume had come into existence. 



Only in a few cases has it seemed desirable to 

 expand, since the object of the book is not to be com- 

 plete, but to give as briefly as possible an oversight 

 over a rather large field. The chapter on France has, 

 however, been entirely re-written and considerably 

 enlarged to meet the just criticisms of reviewers; 

 the excellent work of Huffel, full of historical data, 

 which was not available when the first edition was 

 printed, permitting a clearer and fuller statement to 

 be made. 



As long as history is in the making, a book of this 

 kind can hardly be brought up to date. This should 

 especially be kept in mind by the reader in regard to 

 the statistics brought in. Since these are only to 

 serve in general to show the magnitude of the inter- 

 ests involved, they may without damage be only ap- 

 proximately accurate, and even of older date. 



