Stage the First

Abstract

If a book which is meant for contemporaries and deals with present day affairs, opens with a historical disquisition, carrying us back a couple of centuries, the reader is apt to be suspicious. What could such an introduction be, but the draped curtain of a vestibule, a dusty portière, put up merely because it belongs there, according to an upholsterer’s notions ? We pass by it or under it as quickly as possible and only then reach our destination.