LETTERS OF A SOLDIER

August 1914-April 1915

PREFACE BY ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON


PREFACE BY ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON

The letters that follow are those of a young painter who was at the front from September [1914] till the beginning of April [1915]; at the latter date he was missing in one of the battles of the Argonne. Are we to speak of him in the present tense or in the past? We know not: since the day when the last mud-stained paper reached them, announcing the attack in which he was to vanish, what a close weight of silence for those who during eight months lived upon these almost daily letters! But for how many women, how many mothers, is a grief like this to-day a common lot!