But after living for months with this war book, I cannot yet see it in perspective nor gauge its value. I give it to the world because it seems to belong to the world, and because among the thousand letters which I have received from the readers of “Letters From a Living Dead Man,” so many have asked for further writings of “X.” The first book is now being translated into four European languages, and other translations have been offered. I want to thank all those persons in many countries who have written me so kindly about the book. It was more for them than for myself that I embraced the offered opportunity to hear what “X” had to say about the Great War. To receive genuine communications from the other world (assuming as I must that such communication is possible) involves sacrifice on the part of the amanuensis, even in the protected quiet of a country home. To do it in a great rushing city like New York, amidst the distractions of a complex social life, and during a war like this by whose horrors the “sensitive” is especially buffetted, and in a clashing pro-German pro-Allies environment, has been an education in self-control. But the war cannot last forever, and some day joy will come back to the world. _New York, Sept., 1915_. ELSA BARKER. [Illustration: DAVID PATTERSON HATCH _Born Dresden, Maine, November 22, 1846_ _Died Los Angeles, California, February 21, 1912_] WAR LETTERS FROM THE LIVING DEAD MAN LETTER I THE RETURN OF “X” IN a far away star I heard the command: “Go back to the earth, and learn the mysteries of love and hate.” I did not know to what I was going, but went as commanded. As I neared the earth an army of angry beings sought to bar my way. “What are you doing here?” they cried. “This is our field, and we brook no interference.” I called to the Teacher, and he stood beside me. Even he was grave at the power of the forces before us. “It has come,” the Teacher said; “it has come suddenly, after a long preparation.” Wrath is a cosmic force, and hate is a cosmic force, and love is a cosmic force, and fear is a cosmic force. Did you think that love was a pretty sentiment? Did you think that hate was a mere annoyance? I have seen the sources of wrath and hate and love and fear, and that my experience may be of use in helping men to understand the forces working in and behind the race, I have made the effort to write for the world again. This war is more than a war of men; it is more than a war of angels. Its roots are in Necessity itself. A new race has to be born, and races like men are born in the pain and the blood of their predecessors. But as “the curse of Eve” came through her listening to the envious serpent of evil, so this curse has come upon the world through mankind’s listening to the suggestions of envy and hate from the forces of evil within and around the world.