FOOTNOTES:
[2] All numerals relate to stories herein told—not to chapters in original sources.
[3] From the line "Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein" ("Be undismayed, dear Fatherland"), in Die Wacht am Rhein.
"THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND"—WITH KITCHENER'S ARMY IN FRANCE
Stories Straight from the Trenches
Told by Captain Ian Hay Beith, Famous Scotch Novelist with the Argyil and Sutherland Highlanders
Ian Hay's collection of War stories is pronounced in England "the greatest book of the War." This Scotch novelist went to the trenches to fight with the Highlanders. He sends "back home" graphic and absorbing stories of a thousand heroes. They are full of humor, with bits of superb character drawing that make the men at the front seem like old friends. His division has been badly cut up and seriously reduced in numbers during the War; he has risen from a sub-lieutenant to the rank of Captain, finally to be transferred to the machine gun division and recommended for a military cross. The story of the first hundred thousand was originally contributed in the form of an anonymous narrative to Blackwood's Magazine. In a letter to his publishers, Capt. Beith describes the circumstances under which he is writing: "I write this from the stone floor of an outhouse, where the pigmeal is first accumulated and then boiled up at a particularly smelly French farm, which is saying a good deal. It is a most interesting life and if I come through the present unpleasantness I shall have enough copy to last me twenty years." His pictures of the Great Struggle, uniquely rich in graphic human detail, have been collected into a volume, "The First Hundred Thousand," by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, of Boston and New York, which is creating wide attention. One of the stories entitled, "The Front of the Front," is here retold by permission of his publishers.