To tell the story of one nation by itself is thus no longer possible.  Great movements of the human race do not stop for imaginary boundary lines thrown across a map.  It was not the German students, nor the Parisian mob, nor the Italian peasants who rebelled in 1848; it was the “people of Europe” who arose against their oppressors.  To read the history of one’s own country only is to get distorted views, to exaggerate our own importance, to remain often in densest ignorance of the real meaning of what we read.  The ideas American school-boys get of the Revolution are in many cases simply absurd, until they have been modified by wider reading.

From this it becomes very evident that a good history now must be, not a local, but a world history.  The idea of such a work is not new.  Diodorus penned one two hundred years before Christ.  But even then the tale took forty books; and we have been making history rather rapidly since Diodorus’ time.  Of the many who have more recently attempted his task, few have improved upon his methods; and the best of these works only shows upon a larger scale the same dreariness that we have found in other masters.

Let us then be frank and admit that no one man can make a thoroughly good world history.  No one man could be possessed of the almost infinite learning required; none could have the infinite enthusiasm to delight equally in each separate event, to dwell on all impartially and yet ecstatically.  So once more we are forced back upon the same conclusion.  We will take what we already have.  We will appeal to each master for the event in which he did delight, the one in which we find him at his best.

This also has been attempted before, but perhaps in a manner too lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular.  The aim has been to get in everything.  Everything great or small has been narrated, and so the real points of value have been lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts, about which no ordinary reader cares or needs to care.  After all, what we want to know and remember are the Great Events, the ones which have really changed and influenced humanity.  How many of us do really know about them? or even know what they are? or one-twentieth part of them?  And until we know, is it not a waste of time to pore over the lesser happenings between?

Yet the connection between these events must somehow be shown.  They must not stand as separate, unrelated fragments.  If the story of the world is indeed one, it must be shown as one, not even broken by arbitrary division into countries, those temporary political constructions, often separating a single race, lines of imaginary demarcation, varying with the centuries, invisible in earth’s yesterday, sure to change if not to perish in her to-morrow.  Moreover, such a system of division necessitates endless repetition.  Each really important occurrence influences many countries, and so is told of again and again with monotonous iteration and extravagant waste of space.