One who tries to tell the story of his life and of his personal experiences, public and private, undertakes a task of rare difficulty. Now that I have completed the work that I set myself to perform some years ago, I recognise more fully than I did at the outset the greatness of this difficulty, and I am only too conscious that, at the best, I have succeeded but partially in overcoming it. The egotism which is inseparable from a narrative written, as this necessarily is, in the first person, is perhaps the most obvious of all the defects which it must present to the reader. Quite frankly I may say that, on reading these pages, I am filled with something like confusion by the extent to which I have been forced to bring my own personality, my own sayings and doings, even into those chapters which deal with public affairs. I can only plead in extenuation of my offence that I do not see how it could have been avoided in that which is neither more nor less than an Autobiography. I may add that I have tried always to speak the truth, and have never consciously magnified my own part in the transactions upon which I have touched.

The closing chapters of the story have been written under what seemed to be the shadow of approaching death. Indeed, at one time I had no hope that I could live to complete my task. No man who writes thus, on the verge of another world, would willingly swerve by so much as a hair's-breadth from what he believes to be the truth. But human nature and human limitations remain the same from the beginning to the end of life, and I am fully conscious of the fact that the soundness of my judgments upon affairs and my fellow-men is not less open to impeachment to-day than when I was moving in the main current of human activity. If in anything that I have written I have wronged any of my fellow-creatures it has been absolutely without intention on my part, and I can only hope that they will vindicate themselves, after the publication of these pages, as quickly and completely as possible.

I have had no exciting story to tell, and no personal triumphs to chronicle. My simple desire has been to write of the persons and events of my own time in the light in which they appeared to my own eyes, and by doing so to give possibly some information regarding them which may be new to many of my readers. I have been always much more of a spectator than of an actor in the arena; but it has been my lot to be very near, for many years, to those who were actively engaged in that "high chess game whereof the pawns are men"; and we have authority for the belief that the onlooker sees more than the actual player of the drama he describes.

I must add that nowhere, except in a few cases in which I make special mention of the fact, have I trusted to mere hearsay evidence. I have confined myself to that which I know to be the truth, either from my personal observation or from documents of unimpeachable authority. My opinions may be of very little value, but my facts are, I believe, incontrovertible.

WEMYSS REID.

26, Bramham Gardens, South Kensington, January 1st, 1905.