I am equally prejudiced against walking across Oxford Circus with my eyes closed at midday, and reducing our fleet while our land goes out of cultivation, although I realise that either folly may be perpetrated without inevitable penalty following. I believe that human life has some value and I am prejudiced in favour of populating the British Empire. Now I am not without prejudices (who is?), but if I were told that I have fewer than any other inhabitant of these islands, I should be less surprised than if almost any other singularity were alleged against me. In England, one (otherwise too-kindly) reviewer considers that the book contains evidences of 'ferocious prejudices.' Perhaps he would and the objection may be on the side of the women only. It might be supposed that an American citizen, having emerged once or twice from the disaster of marriage, would prefer to take his remaining wives in bulk rather than seriatim, and get through them as quickly as possible. I have a strong preference for keeping the wife I have, and if my neighbour were to tell me that he has half a dozen I should hear him with sympathy, but my mind would not be disturbed by any violent reaction. I am puzzled by both these characteristics. 'A frequent change of wife,' in Sir Owen Seaman's delightful phrase, is one of the basic privileges of American citizenship, which we of the old world, bound to our monotonous loyalties, can only admire from a distance but they are extremely particular that neither they nor their neighbours shall have more than one at a time.

I notice that this line of criticism reaches me only from American sources. Does he suppose, she asks, that she will be content to consort with servants indefinitely? Women may be as inevitable as the moon, but, like her, they act with a delusive appearance of inconstancy, and the error may not be mine.ДЄ woman has just brought an action against her husband in the Turkish courts on the ground that he failed to take a second wife within a reasonable interval after his marriage to herself, which she had a right to expect from one in his social position. One American reviewer challenges me definitely on this ground, stating that no woman would act as Helen does in the last chapter, and that I show ignorance of feminine psychology. But the actions must be regarded as individual, not typical. As to that, readers must judge for themselves. If such people, under such circumstances, would not act in such manner, the book is open to legitimate criticism, but not otherwise. Imagining a quite probable physical incidence, and certain people to be involved therein, I was only concerned to observe the interaction of character and circumstance, under conditions which would never be exactly duplicated. Its conclusion - if such it can be called, being the event of a critical moment, which must work out its further and most uncertain issues - was neither foreseen nor intended. It was, in fact, written somewhat randomly, allowing circumstances and character to develop to what ends they would, which is the way of life, and should, I think, be that of fiction also. The issue of a second edition of this book, before its sequel is published, provides an earlier opportunity of answering some of the criticisms which it has provoked, most of which were based upon the supposition that it was written in a spirit of propaganda, which is a mistake. This file is scanned from the Gilbert Dalton edition with the preface to the second edition added.

The deluge mount and blade