There must have been many newspaper readers from the earliest year of the Great War who made it a point to read every letter from' the front sent out under the name of this now famous war correspondent. The clarity, the sanity, and the transparent honesty of his nartatives contrasted strongly with much coming from other sources. One felt instinctively that he was, getting as near to the truth as the censors would allow. It is the intent of the author-under this not very satisfactory title—to put forth full and faithful otatement of much which it was not possible to make clear at the time.
Tap Pex axe THE Sworn.
Under eight general heads are grouped what the author has say in review and in confirmation of what (using many millions words) he has already published in his daily narratives, nothing in which is he ready 40 cancel, to alter, or to deny, since he claim: "sincerely and humbly" that they are a "truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France and Belgium broadly pictured as far as I could see er know." The section on Observers and Commanders" gives a compendious sketch of the somewhat. strained relations between the correspondents and the higher officers, especially at the outset. Many. of them followed "K" in hating all writers in the war zone, for to them civilian there wearing khaki was} little better than a spy. Gradually many of them came to alter their opinion later on. The whole nar-
; tative exhibits the struggle between the old-style dignified, mar-tinct general, colonel, major, captain, and the thoroughly democratic instincts of the men. The old Regular school of service and tradition was a close corporation in command of the machine, and it was not within their nature or philosophy to make way for a Inow type. Among the men the best exhibit of a new type was in the demeanour of the lithe, tall, alert, country-bred, indomitable Australian, impatient of any superfluous control, at times almost to the point of mutiny. "G.H.Q." comes in for much trenchant criticism, especially the General Staff who seemed so often to be elaborating their old futile preparations, and so often to be taken wholly by surprise at the untoward re-: sults. The "School of Courage," "The Nature of a Battle," "A Winter of Discontent," each of these essays gathers up all experiences particularly illuminating the \topic under discussion, although this involves some inevitable repetition. Perhaps the most Hinstructive of them all is that called "The Psychology of the Somme." This is a careful study jof the effect on the minds of the men and officers alike of the slowly formed conviction that they had been deceived as to the war itself, their own resources and those of the enemy alike, and by the false and foolish statements persistently and officially put forth, the studied suppression of all reference to mistakes and disasters, the general toning down and colouring up of what was allowed to be given to the public. There was especial exasperation at the refusal to allow the British public to be told what divisions, brigades, regiments. had participated in" particular action though it was known to certainty that all this information was fully in possession of the Germans! The prevailing impression upon the mind of the unprejudiced. spectator was the incessant, hopeless, illimitable and unending waste, waste, waste of it all, and to what purpose?
A single bomb blotted out countless lives of promise, the best that Britain bred, lives' which might have blossomed into great leaders of thought and action, teachers, captains of industry, poets, philosophers, statesmen, strengthening \and steadying the Empire for generations to come. The loss of these intellects, these hearts off oak, these wills of steel, the men of insight, uplift, and vision is now more and more keenly felt in every country touched by the destruction of human life in the war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.