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he got too old. He served in the ranks in Flanders during practically the whole period of the War, and had, he thought, something to tell that had not yet been told. I urged him to sit down and write his account before it had gone from his mind, and he went away declaring that he would start upon it that very day. But he has not done it and
I
do not think he ever will.
    There are many men in the same position. They have something to tell about the War, but have never been induced to put it on record. There is a deep reluctance in most men to write of things with which they were so closely concerned. To most of them the War was not an event: it was their lives stretched to the most painful degree of tension and desperate effort of which they were capable. Many men have never recovered from the numbing effect of the War upon their senses, and do not wish to recall all that happened in those dreadful years. Yet the world loses by the silence of those who have knowledge, and, for the full lesson of the War to be learned, as many as possible of those who know what it meant should put their experiences on record.
    With that in mind I invited the readers of ‘Everyman’ to send me accounts of their actual War experiences, in not more than three thousand words, offering a small prize for the best narrative received. In the course of a few weeks I received over three hundred narratives, of which two hundred and eighty-nine were worth serious consideration. I did not expect so remarkable a result. At least half of them deserved to be printed, and I finally came to the conclusion that a selection of the very best should be made into a book.
    The writers had been asked to relate their experiences straightforwardly and simply. ‘Good writing’ was not expected. The result was that the bulk of the manuscripts were plain statements of fact recording experiences that were deeply felt. The amount of ‘literary’ effort was remarkably small. A certain number adopted the short story form, but these were mostly rejected, and only a few are included in this volume. Most of the manuscripts were hand-written. Some of them were substantiated by diaries and other papers. On the whole the narratives did not seem to suffer from exaggeration. I ask the reader to judge that for himself from the selection in the following pages. Indeed, understatement was characteristic of many of them, they were very English in that respect. Some made comments on the War, deeply resenting its effects on themselves, or its social and political results. I have not included much comment of the sort. Here and there a tendency to overdo the ‘horrors’ was shown; but there was remarkably little bad language.
    The narratives are of various kinds. Some relate to single incidents, others give a general impression of War experience. Some, as I have indicated, were written from diaries, others from deeply engraved memory. Some of them are human documents of the first order. Major events in the history of the War are referred to from time to time, but generally the narratives present personal experience. It is noticeable that hardly any feeling against the enemy is expressed. Only two writers referred to the Germans as ‘Huns,’ for ‘Jerry’ is the usual epithet. I have interfered with the narratives as little as possible in editing them, checking names of places as far as I could, and clearing up doubtful points, but the writers speak with their own natural rhythm and style.
    The cumulative effect of these narratives is impressive. They seem to me to give a more convincing sense of the War than any War book that I have yet seen. They are best read, I venture to think, so as to get this cumulative effect. I have arranged them in the order of events as far as possible. I regret that there are so few from the Navy, but one of them by a seaman is an extremely vivid piece of writing.
    The impression that I get from reading them is not that of suffering or horror, but of the