LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXX
Garden City Press, Letchworth, Herts.
"... Henceforth
These are our saints.
These that we touched, and kissed,
And frowned upon;
These that were frail, yet died because the good
Was overthrown.
That they in one dread hour
Were terrible
Stains not their sainthood, nor is heaven less sure
That they knew hell.
How beautiful they are,
How bright their eyes.
Their hands have grasped the key
Of Paradise!
They hold it out to us,
Our men, our sons
... To us
The lonely ones."
No doubt it will be thought that some apology is necessary for thrustingupon the public all this mass of matter, relating to many persons andepisodes with whom and with respect to which they may feel that they arein no way concerned. I quite realize that my action may appear strangeand uncalled for to the superficial observer. But I do not hold thatview. I, personally, have always felt a desire to read this kind ofliterature. The Press does not cease to pour forth volumes of memoirs byleading and prominent persons—matter which is all wanted for a trueunderstanding of the history of our times. But this is not enough. Werequire all the personal narratives we can get; and, in my opinion, themore personal and intimate, the better. We want narratives by obscurepersons: we want to know and appreciate everybody's outlook upon publicevents, whether that outlook be orthodox or unorthodox, conventional orunconventional. Only thus can we see the recent war in all its aspects.
The motives which have prompted me to publish this book have been wellexpressed by Dr. A. C. Benson in his essay on Authorship in From aCollege Window. In that volume there occurs the following strikingpassage:
"The wonderful thing to me is not that there is so much desire in theworld to express our little portion of the joy, the grief, the mysteryof it all, but that there is so little. I wish with all my heart thatthere was more instinct for personal expression; Edward Fitzgerald saidthat he wished that we had more lives of obscure persons; one wants toknow what other people are thinking and feeling about it all; what joysthey anticipate, what fears they sustain, how they regard the end andcessation of life and perception which waits for us all. The worst of itis that people are often so modest, they