I have always held--and I hold as strongly now as ever--that a novel should have no preface. It should have no preface for æsthetico-moral reasons, and because prefatory matter takes away from the reality of, and therefore damages, a book. A dedicatory letter is a subterfuge. That subterfuge I feel forced to adopt, and must take the consequences. The reason is this: All novels are historical, but all novels do not deal with such events as get on to the pages of history. This _No More Parades_ does. It becomes, therefore, necessary to delimit what, in it, is offered as, on the author's responsibility, observed event.…
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