Excerpt from The Game of Empires: A Warning to America It is not implied, of course, that perfect symmetry can be given to a production Of this character by thus choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, a given date as a point of departure. The causes that underlie the War can be traced almost as far back as any investigator chooses to go. The battle of Waterloo, the Crimean War, the franco-prussian War, the recent Balkan wars, and various other critical periods in modern European history, Offer themselves as foundation stones upon which the historian might reasonably base his work. But if perfection of form is not possible, if the roots of the present con ict are too numerous and remote to be traced to their final origins, if, as is apparent, the ultimate outcome of the greatest Of all wars can not be, in all its bearings, forecast, it still remains possible to clarify the chaotic welter of recent events in Europe by a process of elimination that brings into View, to American eyes at least, something approaching a desirable historic perspec tive. If, in the efiort to obtain this perspective, we come upon revelations that, in their cumulative force, seem to be of grim significance to the people of the United States, the following pages may justify themselves to even the indiffer ent or the too optimistic American. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."