Excerpt from The Anglo-German Commercial and Colonial Rivalry as a Cause of the Great War: A Thesis Presented to the Department of History, University of Southern California, Los Angeles The following extract from the vision of the late Tolstoi is highly prophetic of the grave disaster which at this time threatens to involve the whole civilized world - the European war. The prophecy written in 1910, and sent by this Russian novelist and socialist to the Emperors of Russia and Germany, and also to the King of England, runs as follows: "I see floating upon the surface of the sea of human fate the huge silhouette of a nude woman. She is in her beauty, her poise, her smiles, her jewels - a super-Venus. Nations rush madly after her, each eager to attract her especially. But she... flirts with all. In her hair ornaments of diamonds and rubies is engraved her name Commercialism!... much destruction follows in her wake... her looks of greed are so much poison to the nations who fall victims to her charms. And behold! she has three gigantic arms with three torches of universal corruption in her hands. The first torch represents the flame of war that the beautiful courtesan carries from city to city and from country to country." 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.