The great war will leave more than a deep mark on our country; when it is over, there will be a different England, a different Scotland, a different Ireland. Grown-up people will always remember vividly the old, happy, peaceful, confiding England, as she was before her placid contentment was rudely shattered in a night. But what of the children? There are thousands and thousands of little children who will look back all their lives to this war as their first important recollection, the first impact on their minds of the great world of realities lying outside all childish things. It will not be possible to keep from them the knowledge of many horrors and savage brutalities, and it is therefore the more necessary that there should be shown to them as soon as possible the other and glorious side of the shield. It is the more necessary that for our children, through the long years that lie before them, the memory of the Great War should be touched to noble issues—that it should be, first and foremost, a memory of deeds as gallant as any that have ever been inscribed in Christendom’s long roll of honour. There can hardly be one British child whose little world of personal affections and interests has not been roughly disturbed by the war. Many have seen their fathers and brothers going off to fight, and to many those dear fathers and brothers will never come back. Even the children who have no kindred in the Navy or Army have friends who have gone out. In every village familiar faces are missed, and some will never be seen again. In every town, great and small, it is the same—this new and disturbing sense of personal loss. In this book the writer has endeavoured to show by force of contrast that savagery and brutality are not of the essence of war. The Happy Warrior is to be found in all ranks and in all armies, and it is an inspiring thought that, for every brave deed the record of which has leapt to light, there must be ten others of which the stirring story will never be known. Every intelligent child must have gradually become aware that this great war illustrates the enormously increased havoc that may now be wrought by various scientific engines of destruction. But it is the object of the writer to demonstrate that the personal valour of officers and men remains the ultimately decisive factor. Man can never devise a more marvellous war machine than himself. All through the ages we see that battles are really won, not by improvements in weapons of precision, but by the unquenchable spirit of the individual soldiers and sailors who wield them. The writer has, wherever possible, linked on each tale of heroism to one like it in the annals of past wars. This serves to bring out what is perhaps the most splendid lesson of the present gigantic struggle, namely that the soldiers and sailors of the present day are indeed the worthy successors of the heroes of the past.