|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 6
Somehow or other they very quickly got to the very post of danger. Soon
they got close to the Tower of Ypres, which Mrs. Ward well describes as
"mute witness of a crime that beyond the reparation of our own day,
history will revenge through years to come." Then the English guns spoke,
and they watched and saw the columns of white smoke rising from the German
lines as the shells burst. The German lines are right in sight, and soon
their shells begin to burst on the English trenches. The German counter
attack is on. All the famous sites of the early part of the war are then
in sight, but all they can fully see is the bursting German shells, as
from moment to moment they explode.
In her final letter Mrs. Ward shows other great efforts which Great
Britain has made since the war began; that the taxes imposed for the
support of the war and cheerfully borne demand a fourth part of his income
from every well-to-do citizen; that five hundred million sterling, or
twenty-five hundred million dollars have been already lent by Britain to
her allies, a colossal portion of her income; that she has spent at the
yearly rate of three thousand million dollars on the army, a thousand
million dollars on the navy, while the munition department is costing
about four hundred million sterling, and is employing close upon two
million workers, one-tenth, I think, women; that the export trade of the
country, in spite of submarines and lack of tonnage, is at this moment
greater than it was in the corresponding months of 1913; she has raised an
army of four millions of men, and will get all she wants.
What is more precious than all the rest, besides the vast amount of
treasure that she has lavished upon the war, besides the rich mansions in
all parts of the land that she has devoted to the uses of the sick and the
wounded, she has given thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of her
choicest youth, who have willingly surrendered their lives for the great
cause; young men of the noblest pedigree, without number, by their lives
and deaths have attested their right to be regarded as the flower of the
British youth; the professional classes and the universities have emptied
their halls so that the men of Oxford and Cambridge might take their
places with the rest, and offer up their lives as willing sacrifices, and
all the men of England of every degree have joined with them and been
welcomed as brothers in the ranks for the great sacrifice. The rank and
file, who are fighting and dying for England, are fighting in the same
spirit as their leaders and falling by the hundred thousand for the
nation's salvation. How exactly Emerson's noble verse fits them:
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth replies, 'I can!'"
No one who reads this book can doubt for a moment, I think, that ENGLAND
HAS DONE ALL SHE COULD, has put forth efforts worthy of her history and of
her great traditions, that her national spirit is invincible, her national
resources inexhaustible, and that her irresistible will to conquer and to
rescue freedom and civilization for all the world from this terrible
contest, is absolutely sure to win.
All America is vastly indebted to Mrs. Ward for her triumphant success in
proving that England has done her best and for making this great story so
clear.
In this introduction, too hastily prepared for want of time, which is
really little better than a synopsis of the book itself, I have not
hesitated to use her own language from beginning to end, as the clearest
by which to express and condense her narrative, and with occasional
indications by quotation marks.
I still believe absolutely that nine-tenths of my countrymen are in
earnest sympathy with the Allies and are confident of their final and
complete success.
JOSEPH H. CHOATE.
NEW YORK, May 19th, 1916.
Author's Foreword
This little book was the outcome of an urgent call from America sent by
various friends whose whole sympathy is with the Allies. I have done my
best to meet it, in four strenuous months, during which the British
Government has given me every possible facility. But such work has to be
done rapidly, and despatched rapidly. I beg my friends, and England's
friends, beyond the Atlantic, to excuse its defects. I can honestly say,
however, that I have done my best to get at the facts, and that everything
which is here put forward rests upon independent enquiry, so far as the
limit of time allowed.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|