It was on August 7th that I was offered the manuscript. Of Germany and Good Faith. It did not take me long to decide that here was a book which was just what the public wanted, dealing as it does with a subject which is of the deepest interest to us all at the present moment, for Germany and Good Faith is concerned with that German foreign policy which has at the present time reduced the world to chaos. Here is a history of the diplomacy during the past 300 years of that family which is now the ruling house of Germany. Such a history has never before been given to the world, and. Yet it is, of all histories, the one we most ought to know at the present juncture. The author very modestly claims that it is written for the man in the street, but anyone who looks at the vast amount of research that has gone to the making of it will realise that it is also a book for the quite serious student of world politics. I was struck, however, not only by the gap that it would fill in the knowledge of most of us, but also by the amazing frankness with which it was written. I do not think I have ever encountered a book, and certainly never a book written with such seriousness of aim on so serious a subject, which has been characterised by such extreme outspokenness. The writer is no: respecter of persons, and says exactly what he thinks, and you may take it or leave it as you choose. He strikes not with a gloved hand, but with a mailed fist; but, at the same time, fierce as his onslaughts are upon those of whose conduct he disapproves, I do not think that he is ever wittingly unfair. The care which he has taken to discriminate between the German public as individuals and the rulers of the German. Nation is quite sufficient to show that.
