The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey #270694

In prefixing to the "Memoirs" of Ismail Kemal Bey, in guise of "Introduction," a few unnecessary, but, let me hope, not absolutely futile, comments, I am merely keeping a promise solemnly made during the months we passed together in Paris in 1917 and 1918. It was, no doubt, natural enough for Ismail Kemal Bey to suggest some such association. Certainly his book would not have been written but for my urgent insistence. Moreover, too directly and absorbingly involved in matters connected with the progress of the war to offer my friend the constant collaboration which he solicited - and which, in fact, he needed - I was able to provide him with the indispensable assistance which the occasion demanded. These "Memoirs," indeed, are "edited" by Mr. Sommerville Story; and it is a duty both to Ismail Kemal Bey and to Mr. Story to leave no doubt as to what the "editing" in question means.<br><br>The making of this book was a laborious process. During its production Ismail Kemal Bey was distracted both by grave personal, often harrowing, problems, and by patriotic preoccupations and intrigues as to the future of his Albanian fatherland. He did not, no doubt he could not, give to its composition his undivided time. His shifting enthusiasms and curiosities, his spasmodic disappearances, even his halting methods when he returned intermittently to the task of assembling his recollections, made an accumulation of extremely unfavourable conditions for the success of the operation in which Mr. Story found himself engaged.