d on
the front, near Poperinghe, and Richebourg St. Vaast.

The result was a short book which has been translated into many foreign
tongues--French, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, Portuguese, and
Japanese--which has brought me many American letters from many different
States, and has been perhaps most widely read of all among our own
people. For we all read newspapers, and we all forget them! In this vast
and changing struggle, events huddle on each other, so that the new
blurs and wipes out the old. There is always room--is there not?--for
such a personal narrative as may recall to us the main outlines, and the
chief determining factors of a war in which--often--everything seems to
us in flux, and our eyes, amid the tumult of the stream, are apt to lose
sight of the landmarks on its bank, and the signs of the
approaching goal.

And now again--after a year--I have been attempting a similar task, with
renewed and cordial help from our authorities at home and abroad. And I
venture to address these new Letters directly to yourself, as to that
American of all others to whom this second chapter on England's Effort
may look for sympathy. Whither are we tending--your country and mine?
Congress meets on April 1st. Before this Letter reaches you great
decisions will have been taken. I will not attempt to speculate. The
logic of facts will sweep our nations together in some sort of intimate
union--of that I have no doubt.

How much further, then, has Great Britain marched since the Spring of
last year--how much nearer is she to the end? One can but answer such
questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the
most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who
are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own
personal impressions of an incomparable scene. And every day, almost, at
this breathless moment, the answer of yesterday may become obsolete.

I left our Headquarters in France, for instance, some days before the
news of the Russian revolution reached London, and while the Somme
retirement was still in its earlier stages. Immediately afterwards the
events of one short week transformed the whole political aspect of
Europe, and may well prove to have changed the face of the war--although
as to that, let there be no dogmatising yet! But before the pace becomes
faster still, and before the unfolding of those great and perhaps final
events we may now dimly foresee, let