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senselessness of war. No one who served in it but was oppressed more or less constantly by its futility. Its political effects were far-reaching; but as a method of State action we discovered it to be without any redeeming features. In the narratives printed here the War is looked at from the point of view of individual men engaged in it. These men do not lose their human qualities, their courage, honesty, chivalry, and spirit of self-sacrifice, but those qualities themselves are seen to lose their value, for man surrenders himself to the machine, and all that makes life worth living is gone. The truth about war is that it is an evil, not only because men suffer and die in it, but because it destroys the meaning of life.
    For that reason wars must be made to cease, and the lesson of the Great War is that war must be prevented in the future. War is not an adventure, but a disaster; it has no glamour or romance or nobility. But wars can be prevented only in times of peace, and if the lesson of the last War is learned now, we shall see that the relations between States make wars unnecessary.
    When war comes there is nothing left but to do one’s duty in it as these men did whose stories are printed here.
    C. B. Purdom
    London, February 1930

THE RETREAT FROM MONS
August 23rd–September 5th, 1914
Bernard John Denore
    August 23rd – We
had been marching since 2.30 a.m. and about 11.15 a.m., an order was passed down for ‘A’ Company (my company) to deploy to the right and dig in on the south bank of a railway cutting.
    We deployed and started digging-in, but as the soil was mostly chalk, we were able to make only shallow holes. While we were digging the German artillery opened fire. The range was perfect, about six shells at a time bursting in line directly over our heads. All of us except the company commander fell flat on our faces, frightened, and surprised; but after a while we got up, and looked over the rough parapet we had thrown up; and could not see much. One or two men had been wounded, and one was killed.
    There was a town about one mile away on our left front, and a lot of movement was going on round about it; and there was a small village called Binche on our right, where there was a lot of heavy firing going on – rifle and artillery.
    We saw the Germans attack on our left in great masses, but they were beaten back by the Coldstream Guards.
    A squadron of German cavalry crossed our front about 800 yards distant, and we opened fire on them. We hit a few and the fact that we were doing something definite improved our
moral
immensely, and took away a lot of our nervousness.
    The artillery fire from the Germans was very heavy, but was dropping behind us on a British battery. The company officer, who had stayed in the open all the time, had taken a couple of men to help get the wounded away from the battery behind us. He returned about 6.30 p.m., when the firing had died down a bit, and told us the battery had been blown to bits.
    I was then sent with four men on outpost to a signal box at a level crossing, and found it was being used as a clearing station for wounded. After dark more wounded were brought in from the 9th Battery R.F.A. (the battery that was cut up). One man was in a very bad way, and kept shrieking out for somebody to bring a razor and cut his throat, and two others died almost immediately.
    I was going to move a bundle of hay when someone called out, ‘Look out, chum. There’s a bloke in there.’ I saw a leg completely severed from its body, and suddenly felt very sick and tired.
    The German rifle-fire started again and an artillery-man to whom I was talking was shot dead. I was sick then. Nothing much happened during the night, except that one man spent the time kissing a string of rosary beads, and another swore practically the whole night.
    August 24th
– Just about dawn a party of Germans came near and we opened fire on them and hit quite a number. We thought of following them up, but a