The times " History of the war, of which we publish the first part to-day, has been framed with the object of producing an account of the great contest now in progress, which shall be at once popular and authoritative.

This book contains three essays, written in the first two years of the war to explain to neutral nations the aims, and justify the action, of Great Britain. They are followed by three Addresses of a non-political character, treating of war in general, its causes and some of its phenomena, its social effects, its relation to human progress. The last two essays now appear in print for the first time.

Russia, Italy, and Japan the representatives of the people had established their right to share the government with the personal sovereign. Today seven of those nine powers are plunged into the heat of the fray; and in every one democracy seems, for the time being, submerged.

The collection of military poems.

Our officers and men, under intensive training for the war, will have but little time to make a formal study of French. This little, book has accordingly been written in the belief that it may help them to some knowledge of that language. It is not in- tended as a short cut : no such thing exists.

Illustrated from photographs by the Author.

This volume contains the lettei's of The Times Correspondent from the seat of war in the East. Except a few omissions and some slight altei'ations, they appear here precisely as they appeared originally in The Times newspaper.

Unity of doctrine is absolutely essential. This I set forth in my " Advice to Surgeons." In order to avoid the excess of operative measures which has been seenin recent wars, it was urgent to lay stress on the almost uniform conserva- tism of our present surgery, but a rapid, synthetic outline was not sufficient. It was necessary to complete it by information on the special aspect of the wounds we see, on their complications, and also by adequate details with regard to the best methods for us to follow. Therefore the present work became a necessary supplement.

This is by no means the first collection of poems of the great war; and it is certain that it will not be the last. If it has one outstanding characteristic which distinguishes it from other collections, it is that the material for it is not the result of a quest among volumes of verse, and only to a slight degree is it the work of the recognized poets.

Texts War songs.

The reader of this booklet is not expected to agree with everything in it. The rhymes express only the irnpressions made on the writer at the time by the varied incidents and conditions arising out of the great war, and some of them did not apply when circumstances changed.

There is a lull on all the battle fronts. In spite of the readjustments in Italy and Palestine the weather has imposed a sort of armistice on the combatants.

The second year of the war opened in the West with the enemy, although superior in man power and munitionment, pinned down to a defensive line from Belfort to the sea. The new armies of the British Empire were still being raised and trained, and neither England nor France had reached their zenith in the production of guns and munitions. The western front was to remain for a time comparatively inactive.

In all the welter of the tragic upheaval which is shattering institutions once thought immutable, condemning millions to physical death and awakening other millions to spiritual life, making staggering discoveries of unexpected human strength or weakness, thrusting men into fame one day or to oblivion the next, there has been nothing more dramatic than the sudden manifestation of the genius of the Dutchman, Louis Raemaekers, who, as Europe recoiled from the first shock of German barbarity, threw down his brush for his pencil and by the intensity of his spirit aroused the compassion and fired the anger of the world with his cartoons of the Belgian violation.

One of the minor peculiarities of this unprecedented war is the Tour of the Front. After some months of suppressed information — in which even the war correspondent was discouraged to the point of elimination — it was discovered on both sides that this was a struggle in which Opinion was playing a larger and more important part than it had ever done before.