ER

_Discovery of the South Pole_ (_A.D. 1911_)
ROALD AMUNDSEN

_The Chinese Revolution_ (_A.D. 1912_)
ROBERT MACHRAY
R.F. JOHNSTON
TAI-CHI QUO

_A Step Toward World Peace_ (_A.D. 1912_)
HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT

_Tragedy of the "Titanic"_ (_A.D. 1912_)
W.A. INGLIS

_Our Progressing Knowledge of Life Surgery_ (_A.D. 1912_)
GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT
PROFESSOR R. LEGENDRE

_Overthrow of Turkey by the Balkan States_ (_A.D. 1912_)
J. ELLIS BARKER
FREDERICK PALMER
PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN

_Mexico Plunged Into Anarchy_ (_A.D. 1913_)
EDWIN EMERSON
WILLIAM CAROL

_The New Democracy_ (_A.D. 1913_)
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON

_The Income Tax in America_ (_A.D. 1913_)
JOSEPH A. HILL

_The Second Balkan War_ (_A.D. 1913_)
PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN
CAPT. A.H. TRAPMANN

_Opening of the Panama Canal_ (_A.D. 1914_)
COL. GEORGE W. GOETHALS
BAMPFYLDE FULLER

_Universal Chronology_ (_1910-1914_)

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

THE RECENT DAYS (1910-1914)

CHARLES F. HORNE

The awful, soul-searing tragedy of Europe's great war of 1914 came to
most men unexpectedly. The real progress of the world during the five
years preceding the war had been remarkable. All thinkers saw that the
course of human civilization was being changed deeply, radically; but
the changes were being accomplished so successfully that men hoped that
the old brutal ages of military destruction were at an end, and that we
were to progress henceforth by the peaceful methods of evolution rather
than the hysterical excitements and volcanic upheavals of revolution.

Yet even in the peaceful progress of the half-decade just before 1914
there were signs of approaching disaster, symptoms of hysteria. This
period displayed the astonishing spectacle of an English parliament,
once the high example for dignity and the model for self-control among
governing bodies, turned suddenly into a howling, shrieking mob. It
beheld the Japanese, supposedly the most extravagantly loyal among
devotees of monarchy, unearthing among themselves a conspiracy of
anarchists so wide-spread, so dangerous, that the government held their
trials in secret and has never dared reveal all that was discovered. It
beheld the women of Persia bursting from the secrecy of their harems
and with modern revolvers forcing their own democratic leaders to stand
firm in patriotic