“The books are now published, with a few exceptions substantially as they were issued for the use of the Delegates [to the Versailles Conference]. No attempt has been made to bring them up to date, for, in the first place, such a process would have entailed a great loss of time and a prohibitive expense; and, in the second, the political and other conditions of a great part of Europe and of the Nearer and Middle East are still unsettled and in such a state of flux that any attempt to describe them would have been incorrect or misleading. The books are therefore to be taken as describing, in general, ante-bellum conditions” [G.W. Prothero, General editor and formerly Director of the Historical Section, from the Editorial Note]
