FOREWORD BY EVERY theory of inheritance and environment Saladin the Kurd should have been ruthless, rapacious, indifferent to the rights of others, a type of the arrogant despot controlled by his own selfish desires. The people from whom he sprang were a wild lot, fighters, robbers and contemptuous of the advancement in civilization shown by their less primitive neighbors. The right of the strongest sword was incontestable in their eyes, and no other right received consideration. Truculently they invaded the lands of the Armenians .and the Persians and possessed themselves of whatever'they found worth the taking. By turns shepherds and bandits, as conditions favored, subsisting simply, indifferent to the comforts craved by weaker humanity. Here certainly was not a hothouse for the propagating of gallantry and courtesy and the grand manner. Nor for the growth of those virtues, always rare but never more so than in the semibarbarous mediaeval period, of forbearance, kindliness and the spirit of mercy. Ye t all the evidence agrees, and none cries so loudly as that of his opponents, that Saladin was all these. A cavalier at all times, as perfect in manner as in per si