"Human Documents" of Battle
By Men Who Saw or Took Part.
Written in the hurry and confusion of battle, and without the opportunity at hand to check up the impressions given, it is of course likely that these dispatches from special correspondents may contain many things which history will correct. But as human documents they have no equal, and history will not be able, however she may correct matters of detail and partisan feeling, to offer anything which will give a more vivid impression of the glare and roar of battle than do these letters, penned by men actually in or near the firing line at the moment of great events. As such The Times offers them, not as frozen history, but as history in the making, and has no apologies to make for an error of fact here and there, for those very errors are in a way testimony that adds value to the story—the story of honest and hard-driven human beings writing what was passing before their eyes.