Encouragement has powerful influence in stimulating effort and also in creating and conserving conditions in which men may "do their best." What we are trying to learn is, what man may do, under favourable conditions of knowledge and confidence, to relieve his body of the strain of energy-taxing labour in disposing of the waste which any excess of food imposes. It is a constructive experiment and not a mere statistical measurement. Appreciation and applause assist; doubt and ridicule obstruct.

The soldiers and physiologists are too busy studying indigestion and possible proteid poisoning and what-not-other causes of intemperance, disease, and suffering to ask you to assist in spreading only serious report and right suggestion relative to the importance and purport of the investigation, but it is my privilege to ask it for the general good.

Just another word of introduction and then will follow some postintroductory coincidences relative to the work in hand, and then an attempt to lay out a ten-page chart of the personal responsibility in the care of the body and the nourishment of the mind by aid of an economic and most satisfactory nutrition, so as to make conservation of energy as easy as possible and life well worth the living. The scientific support from the pens of professional observers is, however, the real meat of the book, for which compiler and reader alike are and should be grateful.

In serving in the humanitarian ranks in a commonweal campaign one should not need to use the concealment of modesty, nor should he fail to speak with all frankness. What are the motives behind all this energy to reform the eating habits of the people? The question has been so often asked that it is better thus publicly answered.

No one concerned in the campaign has any personal monetary interest in any kind of food, prepared or otherwise. The movement began in a suggestion carried by an accidental word given to the author by a friend, an old-time friend in Japan, and a friendship never to be forgotten, as related in the author's book "Menti-culture." Pursuit of menticulture led further to the discovery that the best mental results could not be accomplished in a body weakened by any indigestion, any mal-assimilation of nutriment, any excess of the waste of indigestion. Then came the quest for the causes of malnutrition, which were soon found, by study of the natural sequences and by going behind the hypotheses of text-book authority, to arise in the careless ingestion of food, its neglect in the mouth, and the consequent glut of unassimilable excess within the body, necessitating enormous expense of brain and body energy to get rid of the excess.

When the secret of the potency for good of a rationally economic alimentation was revealed to the author, was confirmed by several colleagues of different ages and both sexes, and was tested by work and endurance measurement, and also by the test time, it became necessary to have given to it the indorsement of highest authority in order to have the information credited. The new rediscovery was a simple matter, something everybody thought they knew all about because it had been under their nose all their life and was one of the commonplaces of every-day living, but for that very reason it failed to receive credence, and the backbone of the doubt was habit - lifelong habit - and this was hard to break even in those who accepted the theory of economic nutrition as a logical conviction. It was also necessary to prove that it was not personal idiosyncrasy that favoured us, its advocates.

It is in pursuit of the latter desideratum that the officers of the army, the scientists, and the great humanitarian health-restoring institutions have entered upon conclusive investigations, each in their own way, to chart out a law of economy that will be generally applicable and which, it is hoped, can be understood by kinder-gartners and mothers for the benefit of the present and of coming generations.

It was just stated that no one concerned in the inquiry was interested in any food product or in any personally profitable business concern, and mention of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, so widely known as the pioneer in fostering the pure food and prepared-cereal manufacture, may cast a doubt upon the matter in the minds of those who do not know that the Sanitarium organisation, in its every department, is a philanthropic, humanitarian institution. It is the parent and feeder of the American Medical Missionary Cause, which already has established branches in something over sixty localities situated in or near large cities in different parts of the world, chiefly America. By perpetual charter all the profits revert to the spread of the work and the employees serve for a mere pittance, deriving their major compensation from enjoyment of the altruistic work.

The old prejudice against the human race which declared that "everybody had an axe to grind," that there was "a nigger in every woodpile," and such like slanders, must be modified in the light of recent altruistic development. Altruism has always been existent and had a great new birth with the beginning of our era, but it was never before so frankly put upon a business basis as it is now, and this is fast being applied to every department of business activity. It is now done, not in the name of any particular creed or cult, or for future reward, but because it pays - first, last, and all the time.

In the study and pursuit of menticulture the author has found that working for the common good is as necessary to happiness as working for self, and that the retroactivity and reciprocity of the idea multiplies the profits indefinitely.

The sequence of profitable, altruistic interrelation is stated in the "Explanation " of the chain of the A. B. C. Life Series, of which this book is one of the links.

Aside from those actively engaged in the several investigations to whom reference is often made, the author wishes to express special gratitude to Sir Michael Foster and to Professor Henry Pickering Bowditch of the Board of Scientific Assessors. Unselfish and unremitting in their assistance and encouragement, the author's work has been made easy since their interest was enlisted.

Sir Michael, as Member of Parliament in England, and as a physiological savant, knows that economic nutrition is the key to England's welfare, as well as the basic necessity of temperance, morality, health, and efficiency, as is expressed in the two documents from him reproduced in the "Report of a Plan for an International Investigation into the Subject of Human Nutrition" and in his "Note" on the Cambridge examination of the author and Dr. Van Someren at Cambridge University laboratories, given herein.

Professor Bowditch, as a distinguished physiologist, publicist, and especially as the President of the Children's Aid Society, of Boston, Massachusetts, often mentioned as the model institution of its kind in the world, realises that the effort of the author to secure basic knowledge relative to right nutrition, adaptable to kindergarten teaching and home training during the impressionable period of youth, is of the greatest importance in social reform.

A trial suggestion relative to ways and means of beginning right with all the children and thus insuring a regeneration of the classes most in need of reform, in not longer than two decades, is outlined in the author's appeal for the waifs of society, entitled "That Last Waif; or Social Quarantine".

Whenever there is any disposition to slack up in patience or enthusiasm to accomplish the ultimate end aimed at, the picture of the waif in that story is flashed back by memory, and there can be neither forgetfulness, indifference, nor repose until "that last waif" has been given at least a chance of choosing between the right and the wrong, the good and the bad.