The opening of Foreword
When Time, who steals our hours away.
Shall steal our pleasures too;
The memory of the past shall stay
And half our joys renew.As I grow older my thoughts often revert to the past, and like the old Persian poet, Khosros, when he walked by the churchyard and thought how many of his friends were numbered with the dead, I am often tempted to exclaim: "The friends of my youth! where are they?" but there is only the mocking echo to answer, as if from a far-distant land, "Where are they?"
"One generation passeth away; and another generation cometh," and enormous changes have taken place in this country during the past seventy years, which one can only realise by looking back and comparing the past with the present.