doing what they can--to bring about a united declaration of all the
Atlantic Allies in favour of a League of Nations, and to define the
necessary nature of that League. He has, in the course of this work,
written a series of articles upon the League and upon _the necessary
sacrifices of preconceptions_ that the idea involves in the London
press. He has also been trying to clear his own mind upon the real
meaning of that ambiguous word "democracy," for which the League is to
make the world "safe." The bulk of this book is made up of these
discussions. For a very considerable number of readers, it may be well
to admit here, it can have no possible interest; they will have come at
these questions themselves from different angles and they will have long
since got to their own conclusions. But there may be others whose angle
of approach may be similar to the writer's, who may have asked some or
most of the questions he has had to ask, and who may be actively
interested in the answers and the working out of the answers he has made
to these questions. For them this book is printed.

H. G. WELLS.

_May_, 1918.

It is a dangerous thing to recommend specific books out of so large and
various a literature as the "League of Nations" idea has already
produced, but the reader who wishes to reach beyond the range of this
book, or who does not like its tone and method, will probably find
something to meet his needs and tastes better in Marburg's "League of
Nations," a straightforward account of the American side of the movement
by the former United States Minister in Belgium, on the one hand, or in
the concluding parts of Mr. Fayle's "Great Settlement" (1915), a frankly
sceptical treatment from the British Imperialist point of view, on the