Then, again, it was a war waged distinctly off the beaten track. During its progress we came across tribes to whom Great Britain was as some legendary land in another solar sphere—tribes to whom the aeroplane and the automobile were undreamed-of marvels—tribes, finally, whose habitat and modes of life and thought are almost as unknown to the average European as his are to them. For this reason I have devoted some space to descriptions of places and people as I saw them.
A word should perhaps be said as to how and why I happened to be there at all.
War has figured very largely in my life. For the past twenty years, as Special Correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, I have been privileged to be present at most of the world's great upheavals, both military and political.
From July, 1914, on, for some eighteen months, I followed the fortunes of the Entente armies in the field as a war chronicler, first in Serbia, next in Belgium, and afterwards in Italy and Greece—a poor journalistic Lazarus picking up such crumbs of news as fell from the overladen table of Dives, the Censor. But I was not happy, because I felt I was not doing my "bit" as effectively as I might; so I followed the example of millions of other citizens of the Empire and joined the army. Detailed to the Intelligence Corps, I was sent first to Roumania, then to Russia. Escaping from the "Red Terror" in Petrograd, I finally found myself one day embarking for the remote land of Iran as Special Service Officer with "Dunsterforce"—at which point this chronicle begins.
THE AUTHOR.
PARIS,
October, 1919.
CONTENTS