we then thought the vastest of all wars, not only that had been,
but that could ever be--swept over it. I never knew in those days a man
who had not been in the war. So, "The War" was the main subject in every
discussion and it was discussed with wonderful acumen. Later it took on
a different relation to the new life that sprung up and it bore its part
in every gathering much as the stories of Troy might have done in the
land where Homer sang. To survive, however, in these reunions as a
narrator one had to be a real contributor to the knowledge of his
hearers. And the first requisite was that he should have been an actor
in the scenes he depicted; secondly, that he should know how to depict
them. Nothing less served. His hearers themselves all had experience and
demanded at least not less than their own. As the time grew more distant
they demanded that it should be preserved in more definite form and the
details of the life grew more precious.

Among those whom I knew in those days as a delightful narrator of
experiences and observations--not of strategy nor even of tactics in
battle; but of the life in the midst of the battles in the momentous
campaign in which the war was eventually fought out, was a kinsman of
mine--the author of this book. A delightful raconteur because he had
seen and felt himself what he related, he told his story without
conscious art, but with that best kind of art: simplicity. Also with
perennial freshness; because he told it from his journals written on the
spot.

Thus, it came about that I promised that when he should be ready to
publish his reminiscences I would write the introduction for them. My
introduction is for a story told from journals and reminiscent of a time
in the fierce Sixties when, if passion had free rein, the virtues were
strengthened by that strife to contribute so greatly a half century
later to rescue the world and make it "safe for Democracy."

It was the war--our Civil War--that over a half century later brought
ten million of the American youth to enroll themselves in one day to
fight for America. It was the work in "the Wilderness" and in those long
campaigns, on both sides, which gave fibre to clear the Belleau Wood. It
was the spirit of the armies of Lee and Grant which enabled Pershing's
army to sweep through the Argonne.

_Rome_, March 27, 1919.

WOLSELEY'S TRIBUTE TO LEE

_The following tribute to Robert E. Lee was written by Lord Wolseley
when co