AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY
V.M.
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
1917
Printed in Great Britain
I have been asked to write an Introduction to these letters; and I doso, in spite of the fact that M. Chevrillon has already written one,because they are stranger to me, an Englishman, than they could be tohim a Frenchman; and it seems worth while to warn other English readersof this strangeness. But I would warn them of it only by way of arecommendation. We all hope that after the war there will be a growingintimacy between France and England, that the two countries will becloser to each other than any two countries have ever been before. Butif this is to happen we must not be content with admiring each other.Mere admiration will die away; indeed, some part of our presentadmiration of the French has come from our failure to understand them.[Pg viii]There is a surprise in it which they cannot think flattering, and whichought never to have been. Perhaps they also have been surprised by us;for it is certain that we have not known each other, and have beencontent with those loose general opinions about each other which are thecommon result of ignorance and indifference.
What we need then is understanding; and these letters will help us toit. They are, as we should have said before the war, very French, thatis to say, very unlike what an Englishman would write to his mother, orindeed to any one. Many Englishmen, if they could have read them beforethe war, would have thought them almost unmanly; yet the writerdistinguished himself even in the French army. But perhaps unmanly istoo strong a word to be put in the mouth even of an imaginary and stupidEnglishman. No one, however stupid, could possibly have supposed that[Pg ix]the writer was a coward; but it might have been thought that he wasutterly unfitted for war. So the Germans thought that the whole Frenchnation, and indeed every nation but themselves, was unfitted for war,because they alone willed it, and rejoiced in the thought of it. Andcertainly the French had a greater abhorrence of war even thanourselves; how great one can see in these