IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU A Contemporary Portrait Of Central And Eastern Europe By Coningsby Dawson New York: John Lane Company London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 1921 CONTENTS IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU CHAPTER I—IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU CHAPTER II—THESE MY LITTLE ONES CHAPTER III—A DAY OF REST AND GLADNESS CHAPTER IV—THE SIGN OF THE FALLING HAMMER CHAPTER V—ONCE IS ENOUGH CHAPTER VI—IT IS NOT SAFE CHAPTER VII—CHRISTMAS EVE IN VIENNA CHAPTER VIII—A HOSPITAL IN BUDA CHAPTER IX—AN ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT CHAPTER X—BABUSCHKA CHAPTER XI—THE SOUL OF POLAND CHAPTER XII—ONE CHILD'. STORY CHAPTER XIII—THE CASE OF MARKI CHAPTER XIV—AN IMPERIAL BREAD-LINE CHAPTER XV—POLAND'. COMMON MAN CHAPTER XVI—THE NIGHT OF THE THREE KINGS CHAPTER XVII—DOES POLAND WANT PEACE? CHAPTER XVIII—THE PROBLEM OF DANTZIG CHAPTER XIX—YOUNG GERMANY CHAPTER XX—NEITHER PEACE NOR WAR IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU CHAPTER I—IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU You may feel inclined to dispute the assertion. You may even consider yourself insulted by the suggestion that it might have happened to you. “It could never have happened to me,” you may argue. But it could. You had no control over the selection of your parents or the date and place of your birth. The advantages which saved you from having it happen to you were the merest accidents; they did not arise from your own inherent merit. It was your good luck to be born in America. No protest of yours could have prevented your being born in Central Europe. So, had it not been for the fortune of your birth, it might have happened to you. But perhaps you think that though you had been born in Central Europe, the horrors of injustice and famine, described in these pages, would not have been shared by you. You would have risen above them; you would have been too astute, too far-sighted, too resourceful to be entrapped by them. Whoever else had gone under, you by your superior capacity for industry would have dug yourself out on top.