BY HORACE G. HUTCHINSON
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
FIRST EDITION ... 1926
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES
PREFACE TO PERIOD III
In this third and final volume of the Greatest Story in the World I have tried to give an outline sketch of the happenings of the last five centuries. It is the period which must appeal more forcibly than any earlier time to all of Anglo-Saxon race, because it is the Anglo-Saxon race that plays by far the largest role in it, and a role which becomes of constantly increasing interest right down to the present day. We first see Great Britain, in the gallant figures of Elizabeth's sea-captains, as chief actor in thwarting the aims at world empire of Spain. A little while, and we see her again taking the lead in abating the arrogance of the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV. of France. But of far greater importance than even this checking of the powers of the would-be masters of the world is that part which fortune or Providence assigned to her to play so conspicuously throughout the second half of the period which this volume covers—the part of mother of nations. It is thus that the historian, J. R. Green, writes of her as she appeared to the world after the United States had fought their way to independence—not a nation broken by her loss, as all had perhaps expected to find her, possibly a sadder and certainly a wiser nation, but, most surprising of all, stronger and more adventurous.
These are Mr. Green's words: "From the moment of the Declaration of Independence it mattered little whether England counted for less or more with the nations around her. She was no longer a mere European power, no longer a mere rival of Germany or Russia or France. She was from that hour a mother of nations.... And to these nations she was to give not only her blood and her speech, but the freedom which she had won. It is the thought of this which flings its grandeur round the pettiest details of our story in the past. The history of France has little result beyond France itself. German or Italian history has no direct issue outside the boundaries of Germany or Italy. But England is only a small part of the outcome of English history. Its greater issues lie not within the narrow limits of the mother island, but in the destinies of nations yet to be. The struggles of her patriots, the wisdom of her statesmen, the steady love of liberty and law in her people at large, were shaping in the past of our little island the future of mankind."
The greatest part, in fact, of this Greatest Story for the last hundred and fifty years has been made in England. That is, indeed, much to say, but it is not too much.
In this volume I have thought best not to take up space with description of the way in which men have so lately lived, have built their houses, and so on. I have assumed that all this would be more or less familiar to my readers from other books and pictures and talk. And not even in vaguest outline have I attempted a sketch of the Great War and its effects. The moving picture which I have tried to make intelligible stops before the curtain is rung up on that grim tragedy whose import we do not even now fully understand.