Mr. Simonds is the first great historian that this war produced. He traveled over the battlefields to record for history the world-revolutionizing events as they were taking place. As the intimate friend of Governments, General Staffs and diplomats, he gathered his knowledge first hand and became recognized throughout America and Europe as _the_ historical authority on the war's strategy. His judgments were weighed by such men as President Poincaré and Lloyd-George--and followed with interest by the officers of the armies. Mr. Simonds had been studying military strategy for many years before the war; he was an authority on the Napoleonic campaigns--but it was not until the Great War that the "man and the opportunity met." He was then an editorial writer on the _New York Sun_, where his first prophetic editorials gained him immediate recognition. He later became associate editor of the _New York Tribune_. His reviews of the war began to appear in the _American Review of Reviews_, for whom he produced his great five-volume "_History of the World War_"--a work for the generations. We can tell here but one of his brilliant stories--his "Visit to Verdun." I--"I START FOR VERDUN--WITH THE PRESIDENT'S PERMIT" My road to Verdun ran through the Elysée Palace, and it was to the courtesy and interest of the President of the French Republic that I owed my opportunity to see the battle for the Meuse city at close range. Already through the kindness of the French General Staff I had seen the Lorraine and Marne battlegrounds and had been guided over these fields by officers who had shared in the opening battles that saved France. But Verdun was more difficult; there is little time for caring for the wandering correspondent when a decisive contest is going forward, and quite naturally the General Staff turned a deaf ear to my request. Through the kindness of one of the many Frenchmen who gave time and effort to make my pilgrimage a success I was at last able to see M. Poincaré. Like our own American President, the French Chief Magistrate is never interviewed, and I mention this audience simply because it was one more and in a sense the final proof for me of the friendliness, the courtesy, the interest that the American will find to-day in France. I had gone to Paris, my ears filled with the warnings of those who told me that it was hard to be an American in Europe, in France, in the present hour. I had gone expecting, or at least fearing, that I should find it so.