GRAPES OF WRATH GRAPES OF WRATH BY BOYD CABLE AUTHOR OF “BETWEEN THE LINES,” “ACTION FRONT,” AND “DOING THEIR BIT” [Illustration] NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America _TO ALL RANKS OF THE NEW ARMIES_ _Men of the Old Country, Men of the Overseas, and those good men among the Neutrals who put all else aside to join up and help us to Victory, this book is dedicated with pride and admiration by_ _THE AUTHOR_ _In the Field, 20th January, 1917_ THE AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT Acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The Cornhill Magazine_, _Land and Water_, and _Pearson’s Magazine_ for permission to reprint such portions of this book as have appeared in their pages. [Illustration] BOYD CABLE--A PREFATORY NOTE The readers of Boyd Cable’s “Between the Lines,” “Action Front,” and “Doing Their Bit,” have very naturally had their curiosity excited as to an author who, previously unheard of, has suddenly become the foremost word-painter of active fighting at the present day, and the greatest “literary discovery” of the War. Boyd Cable is primarily a man of action; and for half of his not very long life he has been doing things instead of writing them. At the age of twenty he joined a corps of Scouts in the Boer War, and saw plenty of fighting in South Africa. After the close of that war, his life consisted largely of traveling in Great Britain and the principal countries of Europe and the Mediterranean, his choice always leading him from the beaten track. He also spent some time in Australia and in New Zealand, not only in the cities, but in the outposts of civilization, on the edge of the wilderness, both there and in the Philippines, Java, and other islands of the Pacific. When he travels, Mr. Cable does not merely take a steamer-berth or a railway-ticket and write up his notes from an observation car or a saloon deck. He looks out after a job, and puts plenty of energy into it while he is at it; in fact, so many different things has he done, that he says himself that it is easier to mention the things he has not done than the ones he has. He has been an ordinary seaman, typewriter agent, a steamer-fireman, office-manager, hobo, farmhand, gold prospector, coach-driver, navvy, engine-driver, and many other things. And strangely enough, though he knows so much from practical experience, he has, until recently, never thought of writing down what he has seen. Before this present War, he was on the staff of a London advertising agency. At the outbreak of hostilities, he offered his services and was accepted in 1914, being one of the first men not in the regular army to get a commission and be sent to the front.