_The First Hundred Thousand_ closed with the Battle of Loos. The
present narrative follows certain friends of ours from the scene of
that costly but valuable experience, through a winter campaign in the
neighbourhood of Ypres and Ploegsteert, to profitable participation in
the Battle of the Somme.
Much has happened since then. The initiative has passed once and for
all into our hands; so has the command of the air. Russia has been
reborn, and, like most healthy infants, is passing through an
uproarious period of teething trouble; but now America has stepped
in, and promises to do more than redress the balance. All along the
Western Front we have begun to move forward, without haste or flurry,
but in such wise that during the past twelve months no position, once
fairly captured and consolidated, has ever been regained by the enemy.
To-day you can stand upon certain recently won eminences--Wytchaete
Ridge, Messines Ridge, Vimy Ridge, and Monchy--looking down into the
enemy's lines, and looking forward to the territory which yet remains
to be restored to France.
You can also look back--not merely from these ridges, but from certain
moral ridges as well--over the ground which has been successfully
traversed, and you can marvel for the hundredth time, not that the
thing was well or badly done, but that it was ever done at all.
But while this narrative was being written, none of these things had
happened. We were still struggling uphill, with inadequate resources.
So, since the incidents of the story were set down, in the main, as
they occurred and when they occurred, the reader will find very little
perspective, a great deal of the mood of the moment, and none at all
of that profound wisdom which comes after the event. For the latter he
must look home--to the lower walks of journalism and the back benches
of the House of Commons.
It is not proposed to carry this story to a third volume. The First
Hundred Thousand, as such, are no more. Like the "Old Contemptibles,"
they are now merged in a greater and more victorious army--in an armed
nation, in fact. And, as Sergeant Mucklewame once observed to
me, "There's no that mony of us left now, onyways." So with all
reverence--remembering how, when they were needed most, these men did
not pause to reason why or count the cost, but came at once--we bid
them good-bye.