What I have written here does not cancel, nor alter, nor deny anything
in my daily narratives of events on the western front as they are now
published in book form. They stand, I may claim sincerely and humbly,
as a truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France
and Belgium during the years of war, broadly pictured out as far as I
could see and know. My duty, then, was that of a chronicler, not
arguing why things should have happened so nor giving reasons why they
should not happen so, but describing faithfully many of the things I
saw, and narrating the facts as I found them, as far as the censorship
would allow. After early, hostile days it allowed nearly all but
criticism, protest, and of the figures of loss.
The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war
and of all war--not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather
as the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out of
their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however
painful, to add something to the world's knowledge out of which men of
good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one
people and another, some new code of international morality,
preventing or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that
five years' sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.
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