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, of miraculous mechanical equipment, are born daily and die as quickly.  But there are also books, that like some men marked before their birth for a place amongst the “Seats of the mighty”; an association with the immortals, that

     “Were not born to die.”

This book seems of that glorious company.

* * * * *

In the—­

Spiritualized humanity that broadened the vision and inspired the pens of the devoted corps of writers, responding to my suggestions and oversight in its preparation; the getting together of data and facts, is reflected the incoming of a new and broader charity—­a stranger in our midst—­of glimpse and measurement of the Negro.  Beyond the written word of the text, the reader is gripped with a certain felt but unprinted power of suggestion, a sense of the nation’s crime against him; the Negro, stretching back through the centuries; the shame and humiliation that is at last overtaking it, that has not been born of the “Print Shops”