“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He istrampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hathloosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His Truth ismarching on.”
—Battle Hymn of the Republic
This book is made up of articles written abroad in the spring and summerof 1918 and cabled or mailed back for publication at home. For conveniencein arrangement, a few of these papers have been broken up into sectionalsubdivisions with new chapter headings inserted; otherwise the matter ishere presented practically in its original form.
It has been given to the writer to behold widely dissimilar aspects of theGreat War. As a neutral observer, hailing from a neutral country, I was awitness, in Belgium, in northern France, in Germany and in England, tosome of its first stages. That was back in 1914 when I was for awhile withthe British, then for a period with the Belgian forces afield, then for amuch longer period with the German armies and finally with the Britishagain. I was of like mind then with all my professional brethren servingpublications in non-belligerent countries, excepting one or two or threeof a more discerning vision than the rest. Behind the perfection of theGerman fighting machine I did not see the hideous malignant brutalitywhich was there.
In the first half of this present year, as a partisan on the side of mycountry and its federated associates, I visited England and for a space ofmonths travelled about over France, with two incursions into that smallcorner of Flanders which at this time remained in the hands of the Allies.
I have seen the Glory of the Coming. I have watched the AmericanExpeditionary Force grow from a small thing into a mighty thing—themightiest thing, I veritably believe, that since conscious time began, hasbeen undertaken by a free people entering upon a war on foreign shoreswith nothing personally to gain except a principle, with nothing tomaintain except honour, with nothing to keep except their nationalself-respect. In this war our only spoils out of the victory will be theestablishment of the rights of other peoples to rule themselves, our onlyterritorial enlargements will be the graves where our fallen dead sleep onalien soil, our only tangible reward for all that we are giving in bloodand treasure and effort and self-denial, will be the knowledge that in aworld crisis, when the liberties of the world were imperilled, we, as aworld-power and as perhaps the most conspicuous example in the world, of ademocracy, did our duty by ourselves, by our republican neighboursoverseas and by our children and their children and their children'schildren.
No longer ago than last March, it was a small thing we had done, as viewedin the light of our then visible performances in France and an evensmaller thing as viewed in the light of what our public men, many of them,and our newspapers, some of them, had promised on our behalf nearly a yearearlier when we came into the war. At the beginning there was an army tobe created; there was a navy to be built up; there was a continent to becrossed and an ocean to be traversed if we meant to link up all the Statesof our Union with all our plans; there was a military establishment to bestarted from the grass roots; there were ninety millions of us to be setfrom the way