The African Boychild

Th e  causes of World War I   remain controversial.   World War I   began in the   Balkans   on July 28, 1914 and   ended on November 11, 1918 , leaving   17 million dead and 20 million wounded . European diplomatic alignments shortly before the war. The Ottomans joined with Germany shortly after the war started. Italy remained neutral in 1914 and joined the Entente in 1915. Map of the world with the participants in World War I in 1917. The Allies are in green, the Central Powers are in orange, and the neutral countries are in grey. Scholars looking at the long term seek to explain why two rival sets of powers (the German Empire and Austria-Hungary against the Russian Empire, France, the British Empire and later the United States) came into conflict by 1914. They look at such factors as political, territorial and economic competition,  militarism , a complex web of alliances and alignments,  imperialism , the growth of  nationalism ...

  T HE  Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and that was all that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the Professor did not go himself, but sent instead his assistant, Korolyov. It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three miles from the station. A carriage with three horses had been sent to the station to meet Korolyov; the coachman wore a hat with a peacock's feather on it, and answered every question in a loud voice like a soldier: "No, sir!" "Certainly, sir!" It was Saturday evening; the sun was setting, the workpeople were coming in crowds from the factory to the station, and they bowed to the carriage in which Korolyov was driving. And he was charmed with the evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the birch-trees, and the quiet atmosphere all around, ...

  THE LADY WITH THE DOG I I T  was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a  béret ; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her. And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same  béret , and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog." "If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected. He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year...