Publisher's Synopsis
From the Translator's Note.
The present volume contains, in the chronological order in which they were produced, all the essays published and all the speeches delivered by M. Maeterlinck since the beginning of the war, upon which, as will be perceived, each one of them has a direct bearing. They are printed as written; and they throw an interesting light upon the successive phases of the author's psychology during the Titanic and hideous struggle that has affected the mental attitude of us all.
In Italy forms the preface to M. Jules Destree's book, En Italie avant la guerre, 1914 - 15. Of the remaining essays, some have appeared in various English and American periodicals; others are now printed in translation for the first time.
I have also had M. Maeterlinck's leave to include in this volume his first published work, The Massacre of the Innocents. This powerful sketch in the Flemish manner saw the light originally in the Pleiade, in 1886, and may at the present time, to use the author's own words in a note to myself, be regarded as "a sort of vague symbolic prophecy." An English version by Mrs. Edith Wingate Kinder was printed in the Dome in 1899; another has since been issued by an English and by an American firm of publishers; but the only authorized translation to appear in book form is that now added as an epilogue to The Wrack of the Storm.
--Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, Chelsea, 1916.
