This volume is but a garnering of non-creative writings; mostly pleas of
some sort or other—wild oats of a novelist, which he has been asked to
bind up. He cannot say that he had any wanton pleasure in sowing any of
them; and lest there be others of the same opinion as the anonymous
gentleman who thus joyously addressed him last July: “But there—I
suppose you are getting a bit out of it. Men of your calibre will do
anything for filthy lucre—you old and cunning reptile!”—he mentions
that he has not, personally, profited a penny by anything in this
volume, and that the future proceeds therefrom will be given to St.
Dunstan’s, and the National Institute for the Blind, London.
In these days of manifold human misery, many will be impatient reading
some of the pleas written before the war; but the war will not last for
ever, and in the peace that follows life will be rougher, the need for
those pleas even more insistent than it was.
The writings have been pruned a little, and a few have not yet met the
public eye.
To the many Editors of Journals and Reviews wherein the others have
appeared—cordial thanks.