tions and recommendations
of the corps of compilers placed at your service, giving you full
authority to review the result of their labors, your obligation to the
publishers ceased.

The transaction between us, a purely business one, had in every
particular upon your part been complied with. From thenceforward, as far
as you were obligated to the publishers, this History; what it is; what
it stands for; how it will be rated by the reading masses--should be,
and concretely, by your own people you so worthily represent and are
today their most fearless and eloquent champion, is, as far as any
obligation you may have been under to us, not required of you to say.

Nevertheless, regardless of past business relations now at an end, have
you not an opinion directly of the finished work? A word to say; the
growth of which you have marked from its first instalment to its last?

-The Publishers-

* * * * *

HAVE I--

A word to say? And of this fine book?

THE BEST HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO IN THE GREAT WORLD WAR, THAT AS
YET HAS BEEN WRITTEN OR WILL BE FOR YEARS TO COME?

* * * * *

DOES--

The rose in bud respond to the wooing breath of the mornings of June?

IS--

The whistle of robin red breast clearer and more exultant, as its
watchful gaze, bearing in its inscrutable depths the mystery of all the
centuries; the Omniscience of DIVINITY, discovers a cherry tree bending
to--

"The green grass"

from the weight of its blood red fruit?

* * * * *

DOES--

The nightingale respond to its mate; caroling its amatory challenge from
afar; across brake and dale and glen; beyond a

"Dim old forest" the earth bathed in the silver light of the harvest
moon!

* * * * *

EVEN SO--

And for the same reason which the wisest of us cannot explain, that the
rose, the robin and nightingale respond to the lure that invites, the
zephyrs that caress, I find myself moved to say not only a word--a few,
but many, of praise and commendation of this book; the finished work, so
graciously and so quickly submitted for my inspection by the publishers.

THERE ARE--

Books and books; histories and histories, treatise after treatise;
covering every realm of speculative investigation; every field of fact
and fancy; of inspiration and deed, past and present, that in this 20th
century of haste and bustle,