I am under no delusions that this little volume is going to do any particular good in any particular hurry. I know by historical study that the way of reform lies through official mazes of docket and precis and pigeon holes, that legislative decisions are hatched out in some bureaucratic incubator that the eye of common man has never seen. I reverence the mystery that surrounds these high matters. It is really good for us that we should know so little of the reason why things are no better than they are. And then how good our rulers are to us in the matter of Royal Commissions and Blue Books! At our own expense we may really have as many of these as we ask for. I wish I could get folk to understand what a lot of sterling entertainment there is in blue books. All the earnest ones, all the clever ones, all the cranky ones of this world set down their views and opinions on any subject at any distance from that subject, and wrangle and argue and cross-examine each other, and then the good Government prints it for us all verbatim and sells it to us very very cheap. Practically, I dislike the shape of a blue book, and aesthetically they do not match my library carpet when they are lying around, which is a disadvantage, but I must own that if I were banished to a desert island I would rather have my blue books than much of what is called classical literature. The evidence is the best reading--and when one comes to the final report I generally find the minority report to be the thing one is looking for, as it is usually the minority who want to do something. But in some subjects, divorce for instance, things are moving so hurriedly during these last few hundred years that actually there is a majority in favour of legislation and reform. Not that this makes the slightest difference as to any actual reform being done. The feeling of security that nothing is ever going to come of it makes it a safe and reasonable thing to print the most advanced views at the expense of the State. The physical weight and size of these volumes have been carefully considered and the whole format cunningly designed to repel readers. Nothing ever comes of blue books, and I do not suppose anything ever will come of them. When I turn over their dreary pages I find myself humming Kipling's chorus-- And it all goes into the laundry, But it never comes out in the wash, 'Ow we're sugared about by the old men ('Eavy sterned amateur old men!) That 'amper an' 'inder an' scold men For fear o' Stellenbosh.