tried at any rate to be accurate, and if they give a
one-man view of events, they are the views of a man
who has been very close to the stage, who has not
been deceived by the paint and decoration, and has
throughout heard too much of the "directions"
from the wings to be taken in by any artificial
perspective.

I have avoided speaking of some of the actors
and giving my impressions of some of their per-
formances, but that has been because I have dis-
trusted my own judgment where personal feeling
might warp it, and in diplomacy, as in politics, it is
easier to be critical than to do better.

Occasionally the reader will meet with digressions
he may resent when getting interested in some
subject. He must think himself in a club smoking-
room with a talkative member, getting on in years,
who must tell you a thing "by the by," and remember
that he is only reading reminiscences.

I have to thank the proprietors of The Times, the
Westminister Gazette, the Standard, the Daily Telegraph,
the Manchester Guardian, the Scotsman, the Fortnightly
Review, the Contemporary Review, and the Monthly
Review, and the writers and owners of the different
letters I have reproduced--as well as the authors
and publishers where the letters have already been
published--for their kind permission to quote them.
I have also quoted largely from the now extinct Daily
Messenger, whose services, under the management of
Mr. Albert Keyzer, to the cause of Anglo-French
friendship, I wish especially to acknowledge.

T. B.

ATHENÆUM,
April, 1914.

-vi-