Chapter II: , Part II

The practical outcome--what should be our policy with reference to defence, why progress depends upon the improvement of public opinion and the best general methods of securing that--is discussed in Part III.

This method of treatment has involved some small repetition of fact and illustration, but the repetition is trifling in bulk--it does not amount in all to the value of more than three or four pages--and I have been more concerned to make the matter in hand clear to the reader than to observe all the literary canons. I may add that, apart from this, the process of condensation has been carried to its extreme limit for the character of data dealt with, and that those who desire to understand thoroughly the significance of the thesis with which the book deals--it is worth understanding--had really better read every line of it!

One personal word may perhaps be excused as explaining certain phraseology, which would seem to indicate that the author is of English nationality. He happens to be of English birth, but to have passed his youth and early manhood in the United States, having acquired American citizenship there. This I hope entitles him to use the collective "we" on both sides of the Atlantic. I may add that the last fifteen years have been passed mainly in Europe studying at first hand the problems here dealt with.

N.A.
LONDON, October, 1913.