EUROPE BY FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN REVISED EDITION New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1913 AND 1920, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Set up and electrotyped. Revised edition, published October, 1920 sig 426771 PREFACE THE first edition of this book was published in 1913. At that time I wrote: "It is a matter of common observation that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government. The United States is happily among those countries in which this development has taken place, and we have seen in recent times not only the organization of societies and the establishment of journals designed to foster research within the field, but also a remarkable multiplication and strengthening of courses in political science offered to students in our colleges and universities, as well as the establishment of clubs, forums, extension courses, and other facilities for increasing political information and stimulating political thinking on the part of the people at large." The book aimed to promote the intelligent study of government, on comparative lines, by supplying working descriptions of the governments and parties of both the larger and smaller states of western and central Europe. Since 1913 the structure, functions, and problems of government have undergone important changes in every European state; in Germany, Russia, and the former Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary, reconstruction has sprung from overt revolution. The volume has accordingly been rewritten throughout, not only with a view to better adaptation of contents and proportions to text-book use, but in order to take due account of the far-reaching developments of the war period. It is hardly necessary to say that many European governmental systems are still in an exceptionally fluid state, and that party alignments, notably in Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, are unusually unstable. There is, however, no such thing as fixity or finality in politics; the uncertainties that surround the European political situation to-day differ, after all, only in degree from those with which the student has always to reckon. Furthermore, study of the principles and methods of government is never so profitable as when great political changes are taking place before one's eyes. |