Excerpt from War Libraries and Allied Studies N January, 1917, I was sent by the Librarian of Congress on a special mission to England. The winter was a very severe one. The first librarian I met said that it was the worst that they had had in ten years. The next said that they had experienced nothing like it in twenty years. The third assured me that he had not seen its equal in thirty years. I expected shortly to hear it characterized as the worst winter within the memory of living man. I contracted a severe case of influenza and bronchitis and was sent to a private hospital, with the telegraphic address of Ecstasy! As I grew better, I felt the need of something to read. The matron brought me a miscellaneous lot of books, together with a volume of the magazine published by the British prisoners of war interned at Ruhleben. I told her that my cupidity was excited by this item, and I asked her how she had secured it. It seems that she had a brother imprisoned there. What interested me especially were the references to a scheme for supplying books to British prisoners of war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.