In the Line of Battle

Excerpt
In dealing with these records I have tried to be a faithful interpreter or reproducer of a tale that has been told to me. I have invited a man to tell his story as it came into his mind, and to look upon me simply as a means of putting it into concrete and coherent form, and as a medium between himself and the reader. The greatest difficulty that had to be overcome was a narrator's reluctance to speak Of his own achieve ments, though he never failed to wax enthusiastic when telling Of the doings Of his comrades. Nothing has left a deeper impression on my mind than the generous praise which a gunner, say, has bestowed upon the infantry, and the blessings that the infantry have invoked upon the gunners. Never in any of Great Britain's wars has there been such an exhibition of universal esprit de corps as we have witnessed in this stupendous con-ict between civilisation and freedom and cultured barbarism and tyranny.