INTRODUCTION
When our President told us that the causes of the war were obscure and that the war did not concern us, he expressed the common feeling of the American people at the outbreak of the war. When in 1918 he told us that the object of the war was to make the world safe for Democracy and only in the triumph of Democracy could we expect peace, he expressed the common feeling of the American people at the present time. The difference between those two utterances indicates the distance which the American people had traveled during the three intervening years. The war has taught us something; it has taught us much. We now know as never before both the meaning and the value of Democracy.
This volume affords a striking illustration of this change in the American point of view by portraying the change in a single mind and the causes which produced that change. Says the author in his preface:
"I went over, as did so many of the others, with the object of seeing war at first hand and of getting some excitement, as well as being of some service. But we do not care to be talked of as young heroes trying to save France, because that was not our idea in going, at any rate, not at first. But having arrived in France and learned of some of the terrible things which had been done by the enemy and what the French people had gone through, and having become imbued with some of the wonderful spirit of the French, we altered our point of view, and were almost ashamed of our primary object in offering our services. Moreover, we realized on getting to the front that our own little section was but a single unit among the five million troops constituting the French army, and that individually we were not very important."
The first of these lessons the American people have already learned; the second we are just beginning to learn.
Such a book as this has two distinct values.
It gives the reader at home a vivid picture of the scenes upon the field of battle. Such a book is all the better for not being literary. We get the first impressions of the actor not modified by the ambitions of a literary artist, and the effect of his artless narrative is all the greater because he has not in his mind the effect which he is trying to produce upon the reader. Simplicity, accuracy, and realism are his characteristics. He is so absolutely in the life that he has not in his mind the readers of the narrative.
And for this reason the book produces upon the reader an effect similar to that which the events produced on the writer. We also alter our point of view as he altered his. We wonder that we ever thought that this war did not concern us. We wonder that we ever thought of leaving our kin across the sea to fight for the world's freedom without our aid. The author tells us that by his experience he became imbued with some of the wonderful spirit of the French. In reading the story of his experiences we become imbued through him with some of the same wonderful spirit. The war is no longer three thousand miles away; it is at our doors. We also have passed through a kind of baptism of fire. And by our companionship with our fellow citizens on their field of battle we are inspired by their enthusiasm and nerved by their resolve to accept no peace which does not give us in the destruction of Prussian militarism a reasonable assurance that our sons will never have to take part in a like campaign.
Cornwall-on-Hudson, N. Y.