instinct of the journalist and take good copy wherever I can find it. I
follow the scent while it is hot and do not say to myself or to my
readers that this or that would be out-of-place here, and must be
deferred to such and such a chapter, or to some portion of the book
giving an account of later years, devoted to miscellaneous anecdotes! In
a word, I am discursive not by accident, but by design.

If I am asked why I make this apologia, I shall have no difficulty in
replying. I desire to leave nothing unsaid which may bring me into
intimate touch with the greatest reading public that the world has ever
seen-and, to my mind, a public as worthy as it is great.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.

May 5, 1922


POSTSCRIPT TO AMERICAN PREFACE

_While this book and preface is going through the press, I cannot
resist adding a Postscript on a point suggested by my publisher. It is
that I should say something which may inform the new generation as to
"The Spectator's" position during the Civil War.

"The Spectator" was as strong a friend of America in past years as it is
at present, and in those past years its friendship was the more useful
because the need for a true understanding between all parts of the
English-speaking race was not realised by nearly so many people as it is
now. That there was ever any essential bitterness of feeling here or in
America I will not admit for a moment, but that there was ignorance,