Leaves from a Field Note-Book

And my delights were with the sons of men.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
1916

Lieut.-General Sir C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.
ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His official duties during that period involved daily visits to the headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field, and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down. The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger, for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D. Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the pages of the Nineteenth Century and After , under the title to which the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine for permission to reprint the short story, Stokes's Act, and to the Editor of the Westminster Gazette in whose hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared—sometimes anonymously.