In this 17th volume of a work which has been the object of intense interest and deep study to the Author for so many years, I would like to suggest two thoughts one of a public nature, the other of a purely personal character. The first is a statement of gratification at the attention shown in reviews and personal letters regarding one of the main ideals which lay before me in originally undertaking this project-a History of Canada from year to year in all its processes of internal development and external relationship. I understand that the volume has been useful to public men, especially, in (1) the condensation of historical record and data as to the different Provinces of Canada-concerning the current history and progress of which no other permanent record exists; and (2) the analysis of the part taken by each of the countries of the British Empire in the War and in current processes of an interesting political development about which the average Canadian can find few facts. A third point has arisen out of the study of conditions bearing upon the progress of the World-War which I undertook to include in the volume when the struggle began in 1914 -treating of all the great countries on either side of the conflict, so far as facts could be obtained and analyzed. As Canada has broadened out into a great country in the Empire and then into a British nation, known all over the world, I have endeavoured, despite the inevitable limitations of the task, to keep pace with this splendid progress in the pages of THE CANADIAN ANNUAL REVIEW.
The other thought in my mind is purely personal. Some of my friends in the press and others who comment upon or write to me about the work, frequently mention "The Editor." There can be no Editor except where someone else's literary work is dealt with, revised and edited. I feel a certain pride in the fact that since it started 17 years ago, every page and every line of these volumes, running into 700 or 800 pages a year, have been written by my own hand and personally evolved from a vast mass of contemporary data, official reports, special records, information received from all parts of the world as well as Canada-an accumulation of facts and historical detail such as only comes to a man in thirty years of time devoted to the study of his country and its place in the world.