This early work by Louis Tracy was originally published in 1916 and we are now republishing it as part of our WWI Centenary Series. 'The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914' is a novel about the horrors of the first year of the Great War. The New York Times Book Review published this critique of the work: "The Human mind is so constituted that it becomes deadened by the weight of numbers, needing the personal, the individual, to awaken its liveliest sympathies. We read with pity and horror of the sufferings of a nation; but that they may be brought really home to us, become really vivid and forceful, they must be embodied in some person or small group of persons. And it is something of this embodiment which Mr. Tracy has achieved in his latest book, The Day of Wrath. We have all read of burned villages, murdered noncombatants, tortured women-all the horror and agony undergone by heroic Belgium in the cruel days of August and September, 1914. Mr. Tracy takes a little company of six people, two of them English, the others Belgium, and shows us what happens to them during that awful time." This book is part of the World War One Centenary series; creating, collating and reprinting new and old works of poetry, fiction, autobiography and analysis. The series forms a commemorative tribute to mark the passing of one of the world's bloodiest wars, offering new perspectives on this tragic yet fascinating period of human history. Each publication also includes brand new introductory essays and a timeline to help the reader place the work in its historical context.

This early work by Louis Tracy was originally published in 1916 and we are now republishing it as part of our WWI Centenary Series. 'The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914' is a novel about the horrors of the first year of the Great War. The New York Times Book Review published this critique of the work: "The Human mind is so constituted that it becomes deadened by the weight of numbers, needing the personal, the individual, to awaken its liveliest sympathies. We read with pity and horror of the sufferings of a nation; but that they may be brought really home to us, become really vivid and forceful, they must be embodied in some person or small group of persons. And it is something of this embodiment which Mr. Tracy has achieved in his latest book, The Day of Wrath. We have all read of burned villages, murdered noncombatants, tortured women-all the horror and agony undergone by heroic Belgium in the cruel days of August and September, 1914. Mr. Tracy takes a little company of six people, two of them English, the others Belgium, and shows us what happens to them during that awful time." This book is part of the World War One Centenary series; creating, collating and reprinting new and old works of poetry, fiction, autobiography and analysis. The series forms a commemorative tribute to mark the passing of one of the world's bloodiest wars, offering new perspectives on this tragic yet fascinating period of human history. Each publication also includes brand new introductory essays and a timeline to help the reader place the work in its historical context."

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A definitive new account of the catalytic events of July 1914 that led to the outbreak of the First World War.

hat cry of despair, so subdued yet piercing in its intensity, reached Arthur Dalroy as he pressed close on the heels of an all-powerful escort in Lieutenant Karl von Halwig, of the Prussian Imperial Guard, at the ticket-barrier of the Friedrich Strasse Station on the night of Monday, 3rd August 1914. An officer's uniform is a passe-partout in Germany; the showy uniform of the Imperial Guard adds awe to authority. It may well be doubted if any other insignia of rank could have passed a companion in civilian attire so easily through the official cordon which barred the chief railway station at Berlin that night to all unauthorised persons.

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict -- much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events. As acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand's murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war's outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, McMeekin draws on surprising new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved -- from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincaré- sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand's murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 tells the gripping story of Europe's countdown to war from the bloody opening act on June 28th to Britain's final plunge on August 4th, showing how a single month -- and a handful of men -- changed the course of the twentieth century.