While striving to be popular in the best sense of the word, and endeavouring to discuss the political factors which have led up to the crisis, and the military operations of the war in a manner which will prove useful to those who have not hitherto followed European politics with any very close attention, this history will also aim at securing a genuine position as a work of reference_ It will be an account written by men of great experience in political, military, and naval matters, and will contain a great deal of first-hand material which will be really valuable to historians of the future.
Readers of The Times will not need to be told that it possesses unique facilities for supplying a narrative of the kind here indicated. The Times staff of foreign correspondents has for years been celebrated for the knowledge and insight into political and social conditions which its members possess. Their efforts have combined to make the foreign pages of The Times the most accurate review of current foreign affairs published in any paper in the world.
