An awfully big adventure

BARTIMEUS
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published 1919
To A. R. S.
NOTE
The sketch entitled Unto the Hills appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine, and is included in this book with the Editor's kind permission.
PREFACE
It was my original intention to gather this miscellaneous assortment of war sketches and stories together under the heading of A Scran Bag.
The aptness of this title will be apparent when it is explained that odds and ends of personal possessions left lying about the mess decks of a man-of-war are impounded by the Ship's Police and kept for safe custody in a sack. This receptacle of random gleanings is called the Scran Bag.
My publishers agreed that the title was admirable—to the initiated. They opined, however, that the bulk of the public would be left, so to speak, cold. They reminded me that it was no use explaining it in a Preface, since no one reads Prefaces. They intimated that life was a sordid business, and we all have to make our livings—in short, no book with such a title would sell.
I therefore turned to the classics, and in Peter Pan found a title which, I think, is comprehensive of any record, however fragmentary and incomplete, whether bald fact or fact sugared with fiction, of the Navy's share in this War.
To die, said Peter Pan, would be an awfully big adventure. It may be so; but, unhappily, the lips of the adventurer are sealed, and we are left theorising, none the wiser.