Old Europe's Suicide; or, The Building of a Pyramid of Errors / An Account of Certain Events in Europe During the Period 1912–1919 - Baron Christopher Birdwood Thomson

DEDICATION

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ONE
I HAVE ALWAYS CALLED
“La Belle Sagesse,”
WHO GREATLY
LOVES HER COUNTRY AND HER
GARDEN BY
The “Sleeping Waters”.

PREFACE

This book is a retrospect covering the period 1912–1919. It begins with the first Balkan War, and ends with the Peace Conference at Paris. Many of the events described have been dealt with by other writers, and the only justification for adding one more volume to an already well-stocked library, is that the author was an eye-witness of all that he relates and enjoyed peculiar opportunities for studying the situation as a whole. To impressions derived from personal contact with many of the principal actors in this world-drama has been added the easy wisdom which comes after the event. With these qualifications a conscientious effort has been made to arrange the subject matter in proper sequence and to establish some connection between cause and effect—not with a view to carping criticism, but rather to stress the more obvious errors of the past and glean from them some guidance for the future.

It would be a rash statement to say that a European conflagration was the inevitable outcome of a little Balkan War, but metaphor will not be strained by comparing that same little war to a spark in close proximity to a heap of combustible material, a spark fanned in secret by ambitious and unscrupulous men, while others stood by, and, either from ignorance or indifference, did nothing to prevent an inevitable and incalculable disaster. That, as the present writer sees it, is the parable of the Balkan Wars. And so in the first part of this book, which deals with the period 1912–1914, the selfish intrigues of the Central Empires are contrasted with the equally vicious proceedings of the Imperial Russian Government, with the ignorance and inertia which characterized Great Britain’s Continental policy and with the vacillations of the Latin States. In later chapters, comments are made on the diplomatic negotiations with the neutral Balkan States in 1915 and 1916, on the conduct of the war and on the Treaty signed June 28, 1919, in the Palace at Versailles.