Mr. Bramwell has asked me to write a few words of preface to his translation of M. Sorel's admirable study in eighteenth century diplomacy. This study was an early work of the greatest of living historians. My task seems somewhat superfluous in view of the preface in which M. Sorel himself has explained the scope of his essay. Till a comparatively late date the history of the 'Greatest Crime of Modern Times' was known only through Rulhiere's famous Histoire de l'Anarchie de la Pologne (Paris, 1807). But the last phases of the 'Polish Question' were made clear to us when the late Professor von Sybel's History of the French Revolution appeared in English, and the Due de Broglie's Secret du Roi has paved the way for the comprehension of the earlier history of the same question, and has explained the failure of France to assist her two old allies Poland and Turkey.