On rainy days I would sometimes take my favoured playmates into my
uncle's library where five great maps hung in ordered sequence on the
panelled wall.

The first map was labelled "The Age of Nations--1914," and showed the
black spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surrounding
countries, the names of which one recited in the history class.

The second map--"Germany's Maximum Expansion of the First World
War--1918"--showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into the
pale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellespont
towards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out all
else save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over the
Eastern half of Europe like a pool of fresh spilled blood.

Third came "The Age of the League of Nations, 1919--1983," with the gold
of democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the black
of autocracy had erstwhile vanished.

The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black of
autocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man,
spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow to
the Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map was
labelled "Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988," and
lines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the line
of 2041.

This same year was the first date of the fifth map, which was labelled
"A Century of the World State," and here, as all the sea was blue, so