That was
Kendrick, the class humorist; the question was pure baiting.
"Well, Mr. Kendrick, I'm afraid it's a little too early to assess the
full results of a thing like that, if they can ever be fully assessed.
For instance, who, in 1911, could have predicted all the consequences
of the pistol-shot at Sarajevo? Who, even today, can guess what the
history of the world would have been had Zangarra not missed Franklin
Roosevelt in 1932? There's always that if."
He went on talking safe generalities as he glanced covertly at his
watch. Only five minutes to the end of the period; thank heaven he
hadn't made that slip at the beginning of the class. "For instance,
tomorrow, when we take up the events in India from the First World War
to the end of British rule, we will be largely concerned with another
victim of the assassin's bullet, Mohandas K. Gandhi. You may ask
yourselves, then, by how much that bullet altered the history of the
Indian sub-continent. A word of warning, however: The events we will
be discussing will be either contemporary with or prior to what was
discussed today. I hope that you're all keeping your notes properly
dated. It's always easy to become confused in matters of chronology.
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