PREFACE

THE ESSAYS and sketches collected in this book give some impressions of six months' travelling round the Old World between the 23rd July, 1929, and the 29th January, 1930. Almost all of them were written en voyage on the train, on board ship, or on off-days when the vehicle happened to be a Safeways' 'bus or a Ford car and as fast as they were written they were posted off to various English and American journals and periodicals. Thus they were generally struck off while the impressions were still fresh. On the other hand, they do not amount to anything like a continuous narrative or a systematic report. They are simply attempts to describe some of those temporal 'things which are seen' on a journey of this sort. The diary and map at the end of the volume provide the chrono- logical and geographical threads on which the beads can be strung if any reader cares to string them.

The reason for the journey being made was that the writer had been invited to be a member of the group from Great Britain which was attending the third biennial conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations. The conference was being held this time at Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, from the 28th October to the 9th November, 1929. In a general way, this settled both the time and the direction of the journey. The details were decided by three considerations. The writer wished to take the opportunity of revisiting Turkey and of crossing the Syrian Desert from Damascus to Baghdad; so he chose to follow the overland route as far as Basra. He wished not to miss spending the summer holidays with his family; so his wife undertook to drive him in a car, with two of their boys, as far as Constantinople. Finally, he wished to see as much as possible of the Old World; so he determined to come home from the Far East across Russia, and not across Canada or the United States.

The most interesting and amusing part of the journey was the drive from Calais to Constantinople-a drive which the rest of the party afterwards repeated in the reverse direction by a different route (through Jugoslavia instead of through Rumania). The writer completed his own longer journey in duller vehicles -trains and steamers-with the notable exception of Mr. Nairn's trans-desert 'bus, which in every respect fulfilled the highest expectations.

It remains for the writer to thank, very sincerely, the editors of the journals and periodicals in which all but two of these papers have appeared for their courtesy in allowing him to reprint them here: that is to say, the editors of three London periodicals The Nation, The Economist and The Contemporary Review of The Manchester Guardian, of Asia and of The Atlantic Monthly.

An exact acknowledgment will be found in the note on the opposite page.

ARNOLD J. TΟΥΝΒΕΕ