In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I
believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of
men's courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen
again--surely--if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the
hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as
it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on
all the fronts where conditions were the same.
What I have written here does not cancel, nor alter, nor deny anything
in my daily narratives of events on the western front as they are now
published in book form. They stand, I may claim sincerely and humbly,
as a truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France and
Belgium during the years of war, broadly pictured out as far as I could
see and know. My duty, then, was that of a chronicler, not arguing why
things should have happened so nor giving reasons why they should not
happen so, but describing faithfully many of the things I saw, and
narrating the facts as I found them, as far as the censorship would
allow. After early, hostile days it allowed nearly all but criticism,
protest, and of the figures of loss.
The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war and
of all war--not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather as
the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out
of their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however
painful, to add something to the world's knowledge out of which men of
good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one
people and another, some new code of international morality, preventing
or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years'
sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.