There is no subject that is more useful, or
indeed indispensable.

Some evidence of the growing awareness of
this may be seen in the immense increase in the
interest of the reading public in history, and the
much larger place the subject has come to take in
education in our time.

This series has been planned to meet the needs
and demands of a very wide public and of educa-
tion--they are indeed the same. I am convinced
that the most congenial, as well as the most con-
crete and practical, approach to history is the
biographical, through the lives of the great men
whose actions have been so much part of history,
and whose careers in turn have been so moulded
and formed by events.

The key idea of this series, and what dis-
tinguishes it from any other that has appeared,
is the intention by way of a biography of a great
man to open up a significant historical theme;
for example, Cromwell and the Puritan Revo-
lution, or Lenin and the Russian Revolution.

My hope is, in the end, as the series fills out
and completes itself, by a sufficient number of
biographies to cover whole periods and subjects
in that way. To give you the history of the
United States, for example, or the British Empire
or France, via a number of biographies of their
leading historical figures.

That should be something new, as well as
convenient and practical, in education.

-vi-