The PARTICULAR Reader needs now more than ever the help of the Selecting Publisher. Our Not to forget the younger folk, there's a sunshine story PUBLISHERS FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY NEW YORK Please mention THE BOOKMAN in writing to advertisers. AN ANNOUNCEMENT OF CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP THE BOOKMAN WITH ITH this issue for September, 1918, beginning a new volume (Number XLVIII), THE BOOKMAN becomes the property of George H. Doran Company, publishers, 244 Madison Avenue, New York. This change in ownership, it is hoped, will begin a new era of usefulness for THE BOOKMAN. The publishers hold themselves only as trustees for the great body of intelligent readers, buyers of books and builders of libraries throughout America. The announced and only purpose of THE BOOKMAN is to cultivate and foster the art of reading-to minister to the mind of the reader by directing attention to the best in current literature, including that great number of publications whose genuine service is the proffering of recreation and amusement. THE BOOKMAN will not, even in any remote sense, be the organ or spokesman for any one publishing house or for any group of publishers. While not for a moment disregarding the great background of the world's literature, THE BOOKMAN will be edited for men and women of to-day, looking forward always to the new structure of social and intellectual life which is even now emerging from these years of supreme test. Great epochs produce great men and great thinking. There is every reason why this greatest of all epochs in the world's history should produce its own great literature. There is to be a restatement of the individual, the community, the national and the international outlook. In the immediate present and in the near future our literature must deal largely with problems of readjustment and reconstruction. This nation has definitely emerged into the company of the world. Henceforth no intellectual life, whether of England, France, Russia, Latin Europe or Latin America, can be foreign to us. THE BOOKMAN will be jealous to render its service in presenting the literature of the coming age to its readers. In its policy the magazine intends to be sufficiently flexible to enable it to present intelligently the direction of thought as expressed in the great centers of America and Europe. THE BOOKMAN THE TRADITION OF LETTERS IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY BY HENRY VAN DYKE Formerly United States Minister at The Hague The United States of America is not the first or the only nation to discover the value of literary training for the diplomatic service. Take Great Britain, for example. Geoffrey Chaucer, the "morning star of English poetry", was a trusted diplomatic envoy charged with special missions to Genoa in 1372, to Flanders in 1377, and to France in 1378 when the marriage of the young King Richard II to a French princess was planned. Sir Henry Wotton, the friend of Isaac Walton, was British Ambassador to the Republic of Venice during the reign of James I, who had the greatest confidence in the judgment and skill of this man of letters. After his return from Venice, Wotton became Provost of Eton College. John Milton, the loftiest poet of the English race, was Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State of the Commonwealth, and conducted practically all of the international correspondence under Cromwell, whose foreign policy was so successful. It has been said that the reputation of the Commonwealth abroad rested on two pillars-Milton's books and Cromwell's battles. Joseph Addison, essayist and poet, was Under-Secretary of State in the reign of Queen Anne, and Secretary of State in the Stanhope Ministry under George I. The second Lord Lytton (better known by his pen name "Owen Meredith", the author of that very sentimental novel in verse "Lucile", and of other poems of greater merit) was for four years the highly honored and successful British Ambassador in Paris, and for five years the Viceroy of India. Coming down to our own day, we find one of the great ornaments of British diplomacy in Viscount Bryce, the Ambassador of Great Britain to the United States from 1907 to 1912, a period during which he probably did more than any other man to deepen and confirm the British-American friendship which is stronger than any mere political alliance could possibly 3 |