COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. First Edition Wissen 5-19-46 36468 add PREFACE CONSTITUTIONS are at best only the skeletons of bodies politic. But like most skeletons they are of fundamental importance. They determine the height, the solidity, and something concerning the shape, general contour, and functional possibilities of the bodies they support. It requires the superb imagination of a Mr. Wells to be fairly certain that, when 200,000 or 250,000 years ago the Heidelberg man was in operative possession of his now famous jaw-bone, “the sabre-toothed tiger was declining and the lion was spreading over Europe;" or to construct a convincing story of the "civilization" of the Neanderthal men from the skeleton of a youth who "apparently" was "deliberately interred" in a "sleeping posture" with his head "on a number of flint fragments." But it requires no osteologist to tell us that living bones are of importance, not only in respect to their articulation one to another but also in respect to the motive forces that govern their activities. An exhibit of skeletons is not devoid of interest and of instructional potentialities; the veriest layman can distinguish the frame of a quadruped from that of a biped, or the skull of an ichthyosaurus from that of a man. It has seemed to us desirable and useful, therefore, to bring the constitutional skeletons of the new governments of Europe together in a single volume where they could be conveniently analyzed and compared. Not all of these constitutions have been heretofore translated into English, and many of them have been difficult of access in any version. They are indispensable first materials for any comparative study of the remodeled political institutions of Europe. |