Page:The History of The Great European War Vol 1.pdf/11

 PREFACE

THE title of this work is "The History of the Great European War." With perfect truth it could have been entitled JL "The History of the Great World-War"

Never in the history of the world has there taken place so titanic a struggle. In point of numbers of soldiers and variety and power of death-dealing machinery it stands alone. So is it unique in that the conflict is waged in the extreme north, south, east, and west of the earth, concentrated in the very heart of modern civilisation, and even spread over every sea. It is also, and in this respect we have a novel characteristic of out- standing world-wide importance, an industrial and commercial war of the gravest import imaginable, directly affecting all civilised nations and men.

To Britons the fight is one for Right as against Might; for the rights of the lesser independent nations as against the aggression of the greater; for Peoples as against Dynasties and Absolutism. It is also all that to those with whom our country is allied.

But to Britons in particular, wherever flies the British flag, it is a fight for our own preservation as an Empire of Free Peoples— against those who would dismember it and enslave the peoples who now gladly own loyalty to the British Crown.

To the inhabitants of these isles of Great Britain and Ireland it is even a fight to prevent the invasion of their own shores by an alien Power, to maintain our national and individual freedom. The following pages will most probably be read before the close of the war, and it may be they will be read in days, in the very near future, when the war will press very hardly on the people.

Let Britain remember the first month of the struggle, and the gallant deeds, heroic sacrifice, and noble optimism of the brave Belgian people as also of the gallant French. They fought, are fighting, and will continue to fight, not only for the protection