realise that I have
undertaken an impossible task--the most practised pen cannot convey a
real notion of the life at the front, as the words to describe war do
not exist. Even you who have lost your husbands and brothers, your
fathers and sons, can have but the vaguest impression of the cruel,
thirsty claws that claimed them as victims. First must you see the
shattered cottages of France and Belgium, the way in which the women
clung to their homes in burning Ypres, the long streams of refugees
wheeling their poor little _lares et penates_, their meagre treasures,
on trucks and handcarts; first must you listen to the cheery joke that
the Angel of Death finds on the lips of the soldier, to the songs that
encourage you in the dogged marches through the dark and the mud, to the
talk during the long nights when the men collect round the brazier fire
and think of their wives and kiddies at home, of murky streets in the
East End, of quiet country inns where the farmers gather of an evening.

No words, then, can give an exact picture of these things, but they may
help to give colour to your impressions. Heaven forbid that, by telling
the horrors of war, the writers of books should make pessimists of those
at home! Heaven forbid that they should belittle the dangers and
hardships, and so take away some of the glory due to "Tommy" for all he
has suffered for the Motherland! There is a happy mean--the men at the
front have found it; they know that death is near, but they can still
laugh and sing.

In these sketches and stories I have tried, with but little success, to
keep that happy mean in view. If the pictures are very feeble in design
when compared to the many other, and far better, works on the same
subject, remember, reader, that the intention is good, and accept this
apology for wasting your time.

A few of these sketches and articles have already appeared elsewhere. My
best thanks are due to the Editors of the _Daily Mail_ and the _Daily
Mirror_ for their kind permission to include several sketches which
appeared, in condensed forms, in their papers. I am also grateful to the
Editor of Cassell's _Storyteller_ for his permission to reproduce "The
Knut," which first saw print in that periodical.

VERNON BARTLETT.

CONTENTS

PAGE
APOLOGIA 11

I. IN HOSPITAL 19

II. A RECIPE FOR GENERALS