_Author of "My Home in the Field of Honour"_
All during the three weary years of this great war _real_ pleasures
have been few for those of us whom Fate has destined to be more or less
closely associated with the daily tide of events.
As I look back at present I feel that one of my first treats was when
I came upon Paul Lintier's newly published volume called "Ma Piece." I
read it, reread it and recommended it to those of my American friends
who, able to read French, clamoured for some real human document; the
war as seen by an actual participant.
Aside from the clear, concise style, devoid of any pretentious literary
flourishes, the incidents were what gripped me. They were the direct
answer to those thousand and one questions that we, the civilians shut
up in the army zone, tortured by fear and anguish, asked ourselves and
asked each other a hundred times a day.
Soldiers and diplomats, critics and littérateurs, wives and sweethearts
all over the fair land of France devoured and discussed the book. And
little did I dream that it would one day be my privilege to write a
preface introducing to my compatriots this _chef d'oeuvre_ already
recognised by the French Academy, the winner of the Prix Montyon.
This I may truly say is the greatest pleasure yet fallen to my lot.
Pleasure, alas! not unmixed with pain, for were it not a nobler task
to extol the virtues of the living than sing the praises of those gone
before?
It was not my fortune to have known Paul Lintier. He fell in the very
flower of his manhood, unmindful of the sacrifice for country, ignoring
his glorious contribution for the safety of future generations. But
with his passing on the Field of Honour, something besides a son, a
soldier, and a poet was lost to France--lost to us all. It is such
spirits as his that make a country great, make the world worth while.
It is for such reasons that we should treasure all the more carefully
his only contributions to posterity.
His name, yesterday unknown, now justly stands graven on the records
of all time. This humble artilleryman lost in the masses of the
combatants, jotted down on his knees a work that shall stand as one of
the most immutable witnesses of the conflict; a book that long after
we have gone will remain; an incomparable document, a magnificent
offering to those who later on shall study the souls and gestures of a
generation of heroes by whom France was saved.
Some one has said, and wisely, that what most pleases us when perusing
a book is to find the author corroborating our own thoughts,--giving
voice to our unborn sentiments--providing us with material for
comparison. If this be true, then there is no reason why "My ·75"
should not live on forever.
Further than a really great literary talent, this book reveals the
profound and generous soul of the entire "Jeunesse Française" ready
to sacrifice itself without counting, for the highest ideal that ever
inflamed a people.
The admirable patience, the great good humour, the intelligent
cleverness and heroic devotion together with the plain, simple courage,
all the deep-rooted, undreamed of qualities of the French Race, are to
be found within its covers, making it a monument to stoic virtue.
How we love them, all the "Camarades"--Hutin, Deprès, Bréjard,
Lieutenant Hély d'Oissel--and the others--the four million others who
on August second, nineteen hundred and fourteen, stood willing, ready,
to perish for their ideal, glad to offer their lives with a smile.
The dedication to "Captain Bernard de Brissoult, whose glorious death
facing the enemy, drew from eyes burned by powder and long vigils,
the terrible tears of soldiers," is one of the most touching things
I know, and I should like to feel that all those of my compatriots
who close the book have shed a tear of admiration and regret for Paul
Lintier, who died for France, March sixteenth, nineteen sixteen, in the
twenty-third year of his age.
New York,
July, Nineteen hundred and seventeen.