een let loose on the world. The
madness was not of our seeking. It was hurled upon us by a race whose
standards are based on bombing or crucifying their prisoners, and
eating their own dead; on sinking unarmed liners and murdering an odd
woman or two to fill in time; and finally--though perhaps last on the
list of witticisms from a material point of view, almost first from
that of contempt--of crucifying an emaciated cat and stuffing a cigar
in its mouth. A race without an instinct of sport, without an idea of
playing the game. Gross and contemptible they bluster first, and then
they whine; and the rare exceptions only make the great drab mass seem
even more nauseating. . . .

But the crushing of that race will have been hard, the sacrifices
great. And even so will the results of those sacrifices be great. Of
social problems I am, as I have said, not qualified to speak; indeed of
any of the great problems of reconstruction it would be presumption on
my part to hold forth.

It is not for the soldier to see visions and dream dreams: there are
others more fitted, more suited to the task. It is of the individual I
have written; it is to the individual I dedicate the result of my
labours.

I remember meeting a Padre one day several months ago. He was
conjuring at a concert for an Infantry Battalion that evening--between
the forefinger and thumb of the right hand you now perceive a baby
giraffe sort of business--and I told him I thought it was very good of
him to take the immense amount of trouble he always did to amuse the
boys.

"Good!" His face expressed genuine amazement. "Good! To these boys!
I tell you, when I think of what the ordinary private soldier is doing
for me--aye! and for all of us who are not in the Infantry--I just
stand quite still and take off my hat."

And so I have written of the individual. Inadequately it is true, and
with a due sense of my short-comings in attempting the task, I have
written of the men I have met and lived with across the narrow sea.
Not of armies and army corps, not of divisions and brigades, but of the
units--the individual men--who form them. For it is the man we know.
It is the man who has suffered and endured, the man who touches our
laughter and our tears. He has given his all, unstintingly,
unsparingly; and now, perchance, he lies peaceful and at rest in the
land where the seed has been sown; perchance he will come back to the
country he has fought for when