p full their battle-torn ranks and to keep high
and glad their heroic hearts!

I find it hard to come within the compass and key suitable for a Preface
when I am asked to write a few pages to introduce a book about our Irish
soldiers. Too many things surge up demanding expression--gratitude,
appreciation of the significance of what they are doing, anxiety that
Ireland may play the part to them that history has assigned to her. I
must only do the best I can and select a few points to remark upon.

And, first, let me remark upon this point about which there is now
universal agreement. The war has brought into view again what had been
somewhat obscured of late: the military qualities of the Irish race.
There are now, throughout the armies in the field and throughout the
world which follows their fortunes, no two opinions upon this point. I
quote among the words at the head of this Preface the tribute of an
English General at the Dardanelles which I have seen in a recent
letter, because it is typical of the military opinion one hears on
every hand, and because for his generous praise he has found an
expression which well sums up the general verdict. The Irish soldiers,
he says, are "the cream of the Army." On the Western front I heard the
same idea put in another pointed phrase; "We always look upon an Irish
regiment as a _corps d'elite_." The war, in short, is proving anew the
experience which other wars--and other armies under other flags--have
so often tested, and which makes it a maxim with British Generals, as
it was in Sir Ralph Abercrombie's day, always to try and have some
Irish troops included in their commands, if possible, to be on hand
for work about which no risks of failure can be taken and for which an
inspiring lead is essential. It is proving again that the Irish
people, like their racial kinsmen the French, are one of the peoples
who have been endowed in a distinguished degree with a genuine
military spirit, a natural genius and gift for war which produces born
soldiers and commanders, and which is the very reverse of the brute
appetite for slaughter. Irish soldiers may be few in comparison with
the scale of modern armies. They bulked larger in the armies of
Wellington, of which they formed the backbone, when the proportions of
population were different. They may be comparatively few, but their
quality is admittedly precious. As the English General above quoted
says, they are an "absolutely indispensable"