[INTRODUCTION]
By Major-Gen. Sir ALFRED TURNER, K.C.B.
In the following pages Miss Kate Finzi gives in a plain, unvarnished style a terrible and graphic picture of the horrors of war, which have been intensified, as never before, owing to the ferocious savagery of the German troops, as systematically ordered by their officers and commanded by the Kaiser himself, the greatest criminal in the world's record; for this war, planned and prepared deliberately by him, is the greatest crime ever committed against civilisation and humanity. It is charitable to designate him a criminal lunatic, or, as his prototype Caligula was described, an epileptic, with highly developed criminal instincts.
When one reads of such sufferings as those described by Miss Finzi, one wonders for what end Providence can have allowed such an inhuman monster to exist and cause such sorrow, such suffering, such death and destruction to be inflicted on mankind.
The books written upon the vast conflict are already legion, but I think this is the first record—a most pathetic and interesting record—of what happened at the base hospitals at Boulogne, where tens of thousands of wounded, maimed and mutilated incessantly arrived, to be passed on to England, or to linger there till death came as a happy release from their sufferings.
How many officers and men of those glorious "first seven divisions" which left these shores in August, 1914—a tiny but, for its size, an incomparable army, which stemmed the seemingly irresistibly flowing tide of von Kluck's legions against Paris—the "contemptible little army of General French," as it was described by the imperial braggart of Germany, lie buried near the spot where stands the memorial pillar in honour of Napoleon's army of invasion in 1804. After the war it will be incumbent on us, with the approval of our firm and faithful Allies, whose spirit, bravery and skill in fighting has astounded the world, to raise another monument especially to the memory of our heroic countrymen who withstood the hordes of the Hun and thwarted his advance both on Paris and Calais.
Miss Finzi's book is quite unpretentious, and is a simple record of facts which brings home vividly to our minds the sickening horrors of war and the awful sufferings that our gallant defenders have had to undergo in doing their duty, in the service of their King and country, for the honour and integrity of the Empire, and for the safety and protection of the people in this country in this great war of liberation. What they have been protected from can well be gathered from the openly expressed threats of the Germans—soldiers, military writers, professors and ministers of German religion—that the crimes and outrages which they committed in Belgium and France, Poland and Serbia, should be as nothing to those which they would make our people suffer. It is well that these things should be brought home to our people, who, owing to our insular position, have experienced nothing of the horrors of war and are apt to make too light of them from want of power to realise them.
Naturally there was great confusion at the base, owing to the suddenness with which war broke out upon nations entirely unprepared for it and taken by surprise, for, although dark suspicions of the evil designs of Germany lurked in many men's minds, the extent of the infamy of the Kaiser and his pan-German parasites did not enter into the minds of many people, not even in the case of those who, like myself, thought they knew Germans well. The latter veiled their innate brutality, their blood lust, and their intention to acquire world domination through brute force, with consummate craftiness.