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viii and, as Lieutenant, I felt prouder to be in command at the railhead of a Frontier Expeditionary Force in India of less than men than, as General, to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the greatest conflict the world has ever known, when the number of our troops ran into several millions.

In building up the chapters referring to the Great War, I was embarrassed by having not too little but too much material. The difficulty here was to make a suitable selection, and to include just so much about my share of the war as seemed appropriately to fall within the scope of the book. In particular I tried to avoid enlarging upon old controversies connected with the supreme direction of the war, and which occur to a greater or less extent in all wars. I felt that a discussion of them would merely bore the ordinary reader, who is content to know that the war was in fact won; while it would be of little use to any one unless the points in dispute were thoroughly examined in the light of complete evidence, and this would require a book for itself as well as access to official documents which are not at my disposal. I have therefore made, as a rule, no more reference to these matters than was required to enable me to illustrate the work of the Imperial General Staff, of which I was Chief for about half the period of the war—four other officers filling that post at different times during the remaining half—and to emphasise the achievements, though very inadequately, of the regimental officers and men of the Imperial Forces who won the war for us, and with whom I have had the honour to be associated for nearly forty-four years.