WHY 'THE TRUE STORY OF THE WAR' WAS WRITTEN.

Evening Star, Issue 11692, 25 September 1902, Page 7

WHY 'THE TRUE STORY OF THE WAR' WAS WRITTEN.

At the Authors' Club dinner on July 26 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thus told the story of how the booklet that gained .him bis title catoe to be written;— The idea of writing it came to him as he Wa§ travelling to IjOndon in a train, and was reading some of the slanders about the British Army. He thought: “Why on earth does not some fellow sit down and write a thing that a GfermAn editor could tit down and read in an hour, and are all nut arguments?” Then came the idea: “Why do not you do it?” In the evening he had to dine out. He began to talk to his next neighbor, whom -he did not know, and told him the plan he had formed. *■ His neighbor said : “ How art you going to get the money to do all that?” He replied that he wonld ask the public for it, whereupon his companion said: “I will get £I,OOO for you if yon like.” Chance had thlis thrown him against the one man, perhaps, in England who Could help him most, who could get him not only money, but who could tefl him the right people to use as translators, and so om They carried it all out, and in five months he had tbe book in twenty languages lying on his table.—(Cheers.) The monev came from rich people who could give their £SO, apd from poor people who scraped together Small snmS of odd pence in order tW. the truth might be told to Europe. They crammed it down the foreigner’s throat; he had to read it. The journalist, the politician, the professor, the schoolmaster—every one of them had at least one copy sent to him, and in Hungary and Portugal they called fot a second edition. In Germany 20,000 copies were absorbed. In France they distributed a large edition. In Switeerland an intellectual minority, hot satisfied with the German translation, printed the book at their own expense, with maps, and distributed it broadcast, also entirely at their own expense. The Norwegian translator, a lady, lived 100 miles from Christiania, She fotmd that the snow bad come down, and that the translation could Hot bd sent to the publisher. She arranged a heliographic system, and it was heliognmhed from hill to hiR across Norway ana eventually published.'