nfinite complexity, the tragic and
bewildering detail, of the past four years. The motive which sent me
to France three months ago was the wish to make clear to myself if I
could, and thereby to others, the true measure of the part played by
the British Empire and the British Armies in the concluding campaigns
of the war. I knew that if it could be done at all at the present
moment--and by myself--it could only be done in a very broad and
summary way; and also that its only claim to value would lie in its
being a faithful report, within the limits I had set myself, of the
opinions of those who were actually at the heart of things, _i.e._, of
the British Higher Command, and of individual officers who had taken
an active part in the war. For the view taken in these pages of last
year's campaigns, I have had, of course, the three great despatches of
the British Commander-in-Chief on which to base the general sketch I
had in mind; but in addition I have had much kind help from the
British Headquarters in France, where officers of the General Staff
were still working when I paid a wintry visit to the famous Ecole
Militaire at the end of January; supplemented since my return to
London by assistance from other distinguished soldiers now at the War
Office, who have taken trouble to help me, for which I can never thank
them enough.[1] It was, naturally, the aim of the little book which
won it sympathy; the fact that it was an attempt to carry to its
natural end, in brief compass, the story which, at Mr. Roosevelt's
suggestion, I first tried to tell in _England's Effort_, published in
1916. _England's Effort_ was a bird's-eye view of the first two years
of the war, of the gathering of the new Armies, of the passing into
law, and the results--up to the Battle of the Somme--of the Munitions
Act of 1915. In this book, which I have again thrown into the form of
letters--(it was, in fact, written week by week for transmission to
America after my return home from France)--I have confined myself to
the events of last year, and with the special object of determining
what ultimate effect upon the war was produced by that vast military
development of Great Britain and the Empire, in which Lord Kitchener
took the first memorable steps. It seemed to me, at the end of last
year, as to many others, that owing, perhaps, to the prominence of
certain startling or picturesque episodes in the history of 1918, the
overwhelming and decisive influence