VIII.--THE GUNS 49 IX.--A TRAINING CAMP 63 X.--ARRAS 73 XI.--THE BATTLEFIELDS 81 XII.--FLYING MEN 88 XIII.--YPRES 101 XIV.--WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 110 SOME WAR IMPRESSIONS. I. FOREWORD. In publishing these collected articles in book form (the result of my visits to Flanders, the battlefields of France and divers of the great munition centres) some of which have already appeared in the press both in England and America, I do so with a certain amount of diffidence, because of their so many imperfections and of their inadequacy of expression. But what man, especially in these days, may hope to treat a theme so vast, a tragedy so awful, without a sure knowledge that all he can say must fall so infinitely far below the daily happenings which are, on the one hand, raising Humanity to a godlike altitude or depressing it lower than the brutes. But, because these articles are a simple record of what I have seen and what I have heard, they may perhaps be of use in bringing out of the shadow--that awful shadow of "usualness" into which they have fallen--many incidents that would, before the war, have roused the world to wonder, to pity and to infinite awe. Since the greater number of these articles was written, America has thrown her might into the scale against merciless Barbarism and Autocracy; at her entry into the drama there was joy in English and French hearts, but, I venture to think, a much greater joy in the hearts of all true Americans. I happened to be in Paris on the memorable day America declared war, and I shall never forget the deep-souled enthusiasm of the many Americans it was my privilege to know there. America, the greatest democracy in the world, had at last taken her stand on the side of Freedom, Justice and Humanity. As an Englishman, I love and am proud of my country, and, in the years I spent in America, I saw with pain and deep regret the misunderstanding that existed between these two great nations. In America I beheld a people young, ardent, indomitable, full of the unconquerable spirit of Youth, and I thought of that older country across the seas, so little understanding and so little understood.