The book will gain by being read and re-read after the war, when the coming of peace will have restored to us that independence of mind which is necessary for the adequate appreciation of works of art. PAUL BOURGET in _Echo de Paris_, April 28, 1916:— I consider the _Journal d’un simple soldat_, one of the best examples of the literature of war impressions which has characterized the conflict now in progress.… The book is as impassioned as a novel and as living as history. THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE WAR—IMPRISONMENT 1914-1915 BY GASTON RIOU TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL [Illustration] LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. _First published in 1916_ (_All rights reserved_) BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE _Gaston Riou was born on January 7, 1883. He is a native of the Cévennes, the region from which are derived three of the most distinguished among modern French psychologists, Melchior de Vogüé, Auguste Sabatier, and Paul Bourget. The Cévenole family from which he springs played an active part in the wars of religion. On the mother’s side he is related to Jacques de Vaucanson, the leading French mechanical engineer of the eighteenth century, and also to Majal Désubas, the last Huguenot martyr, executed at Montpellier in 1747. Thus by family tradition he is liberal, nonconformist, and republican._