The opening of Preface
This book represents an attempt on the part of the author to satisfy a very real need of a textbook which will reach far enough back to afford secure foundations for a college course in modern European history.
The book is a long one, and purposely so. Not only does it undertake to deal with a period at once the most complicated and the most inherently interesting of any in the whole recorded history of mankind, but it aims to impart sufficiently detailed information about the various topics discussed to make the college student feel that he is advanced a grade beyond the student in secondary school. There is too often a tendency to underestimate the intellectual capabilities of the collegian and to feed him so simple and scanty a mental pabulum that he becomes as a child and thinks as a child. Of course the author appreciates the fact that most college instructors of history piece out the elementary textbooks by means of assignments of collateral reading in large standard treatises. All too frequently, however, such assignments, excellent in themselves, leave woeful gaps which a slender elementary manual is inadequate to fill.