In avoiding the "war-story" type, I have followed my own inclinations,
and have taken rather the inconspicuous parts played by ordinary people
who had never dreamed of being actors in the world's greatest drama. To
avoid the background of war would be utterly impossible, for war has
been a fever in our blood these last four years, and not in one or two
generations will our veins be free of it.
If it seems in these stories that there is a recurrent note on the
necessity of artistic expression for the Old Country, the reason for it
is that we came from the Dominions to a land we all knew, because
English literature had made England our Mother-Country in the real
sense of the word. It is the hope of many of us that the artists of
Britain--whether they be writers, painters, or composers--will yet
realize that the Empire looks to them, as well as to the knights of the
air, to bridge the seas, and by their art make us feel as great a
kinship in peace as we did in war. Dickens and Burns were more than
writers; they were literature's ambassadors, and played no
inconsiderable part in empire-building.
Perhaps, as the study of ordinary people gripped by emotions which left
no one ordinary, this volume of stories may be of some little interest.
They filled many dull hours in the writing.... It would be a rich
reward for the author if he could think that they do away with a few
dull hours in the reading.