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the manuscript of this translation was sent to press it was forwarded to M. Rolland for his approval. As neither my publisher nor I knew the whereabouts of M. Rolland and as we had merely heard that he had left France not long after the publication of his war pamphlet Au-dessus de la Mêlée and was residing in a sort of exile, we were by no means sure that the typoscript or our letters would reach him. But we tried, sending them in care of his Paris publisher.

M. Rolland was finally located, and we began a correspondence from which I shall use certain parts to illustrate this brief preface.

In my original preface to the present volume I had referred to M. Rolland’s having retired from public life and being temporarily crushed, but the first letter I received convinced me beyond a doubt that he was far from it. He would never consent to the publication of any translation of his works without first seeing that it rendered faithfully the spirit of the original. He did not care even to discuss terms, and he added, by way of proof of his commercial disinterestedness, that the proceeds of the Nobel Prize, of which he was the recipient not long ago, and which amounted to over $40,000, he had spent in works of charity.