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ALL efforts have been made to ensure that this HTML version of The World Peril of 1910 uses the same spelling, punctuation, etc. as the original book; however, a few particularly obvious typos and errors of grammar and spelling have been corrected, and it is possible that some errors were introduced during OCR and the conversion to HTML and have not been detected. If complete accuracy is required for academic purposes you are strongly advised to obtain a copy of the original printed text. For various reasons a few deliberate changes have been made:

• Gaps between text and punctuation have been closed to improve clarity and ensure that (for example) the final quote mark of a line of dialogue doesn't appear on a separate line as the text wrapped. This seems to have been the style preferred by this particular publisher, since I haven't seen it in other books by Griffith. For example, in chapter XXXVI:

  "God's thunder!" exclaimed the Kaiser
     was originally printed as
  " God's thunder! " exclaimed the Kaiser

• One important exception to the above: in the original text many sentences used em-dashes (elongated dashes, — ) between two words, with no spacing. This looks a little odd to modern eyes, is sometimes difficult to read on screen, and can cause problems with HTML line breaks. Accordingly spaces have been added to either side of these characters. For example in chapter XXXVII:

  "Ready — starboard guns — now: fire!"
     was originally printed as
  " Ready—starboard guns—now: fire! "

• As is often the case in HTML documents, only one form of quote and double quote character has been used. While HTML does allow the use of left- and right-handed versions of these characters, they aren't supported by all browsers. Changing all instances to the correct left or right version would be a very long job which can't be automated, since the normal double quote is used in many HTML commands. It would also add considerably to file size, since the code for these characters is seven characters long! Readers should be aware that this substitution has been made, as in the example from Chapter XXXVI:

  "God's thunder!" exclaimed the Kaiser
     which was originally printed as
  “ God's thunder! ” exclaimed the Kaiser

  The left single quote is much rarer, but was used occasionally, as in this example from chapter XXXV:

  this quiet-spoken, grey-haired English gentleman was about the best and 'cutest...
     which was originally printed as
  this quiet-spoken, grey-haired English gentleman was about the best and ‘cutest...

  Incidentally, 'cutest in this context is probably meant to mean "most acute"

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No attempt has been made to correct the curious French and German used by the author, or several rather dubious foreign names.

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This appears to be the first edition; unusually for Griffith it was not illustrated. I have been unable to learn more of its publishing history, but it seems possible that an illustrated version was serialised in one or another of the magazines and papers published by Pearsons. Further information would be welcome. The cover was badly damaged, and the scan of it on the contents page has been processed to enhance colours and contrast; the mottled appearance is probably due to water damage, made more obvious by the processing, rather than the intention of the publisher. The spine was too badly faded to be worth scanning.

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Several volunteers helped with corrections; I'd particularly like to thank Dom Hughes, Neal Houghton and Andreas Beck for their contributions.

MARCUS L. ROWLAND
June 2004

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