Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my
decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe
and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. Victory
was the last word I had written in peace time. It was the last literary
thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Temple of Janus
flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, the consciences of
men all over the world. Such coincidence could not be treated lightly.
And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the same hopeful spirit
in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have "accepted the Omen."

The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (in
the novel) of a person named Schomberg.

That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to
offer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old
member of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as far
back as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short story
of mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, true
to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, his
deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology is
completed at last.

I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but
it is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning
him here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation
of recent animosities, he is the creature of my old, deep-seated and, as
it were, impartial conviction.

J. C.

VICTORY

On approaching the task of writing this Note for "Victory" the first
thing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its
nearness to me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written
and to the mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book
obtained when first published almost exactly a year after the beginning
of the great war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the
murder of an Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a
world already full of doubts and fears.

The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in this
edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented
to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having been
published in the United States early in the year made it difficult to
delay its appearance in Engla