FP. PREFACE ONE is perhaps guilty of an unwarranted rashness when he submits another contribution to the multitude of discussions which have covered so many phases of the great world war, especially since it comes after hostilities have ceased, and I gather courage to risk it only from the fact that the subjects with which these essays deal have not been adequately interpreted to the American people. Indeed they have scarcely been touched at all, and yet they are of vital importance to our thinking and to the settlement of the lines along which our social effort is to proceed in the future. When there are so many voices calling us to follow them, and since so many of them are calling us in opposite directions, one should present his credentials before he presumes to speak. During the time which I spent on the western front with the American armies, it fell to my unfortunate lot to be drafted many times for the purpose of guiding sight-seers through the sector we occupied, and I became very familiar with the tourist who came out to spend a day and see "the terrible war." Many times they were veritable nuisances, yet from them we secured a great deal of amusement. These people, returning to America, have enlightened the public so thoroughly on all the events and move V 435176 ments of the war that one is sometimes inclined to think that nothing more remains to be said on the subject. The shorter the stay abroad the more authority does one frequently throw into his utterances; and so I am persuaded that every person who writes should attach to his writing a full statement of the experience which qualifies him to put his pen to paper. I remember one person who was quite frank in this regard. The regularity with which I guided tourists across No Man's Land had become a joke among the officers of the regiment, and we would sometimes gather in the evening to recount the experiences of these wondering visitors at the front. One night the chaplain came into the assembly with a copy of a well-known magazine which contained an article on some general subject connected with the welfare of the American soldier. The writer began by announcing that he had the answer to all the questions the people had been asking about the welfare of their boys in France, and as proof of this he cited and numbered his experiences. He had spent ten days with five hundred officers, presumably on the transport which carried those officers to France. He had visited general headquarters, which was a hundred miles behind the lines, and had a conversation with Pershing. He had talked with doctors, officers, and leading people. He had lived four days in a Y. M. C. A. dug-out at the front. These and similar facts were the basis on which he rested his statement that he had the answers to all the questions the people were asking. Naturally, there |