“For those desirous of studying the war as a military event, these despatches furnish information of remarkable clearness and precision. The splendid series of very large and detailed maps which accompanies the volume, not only enables one to follow each detail of every struggle, but appeals to the imagination.”
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“Altogether the volume is an invaluable aid to the student of the campaigns that it describes.”
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“The civilian and the soldier alike may profit by reading and re-reading the masterly despatches of Lord Haig.”
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HALDANE, RICHARD BURDON HALDANE, 1st viscount of Cloan. Before the war. il *$2.50 (5½c) Funk 327.42
20–3879
The attitude of the author throughout is that of an impartial investigator rather than an accuser. “Few wars are really inevitable,” he says. “If we knew better how we should be careful to comport ourselves it may be that none are so.... How some of those who were deeply responsible for the conduct of affairs tried to think in the anxious years before the war, and how they endeavored to apply their conclusions, is what I have endeavored to state in the course of what follows.” (Introd.) The book is based on personal, official experience and contains several interviews of the author with the kaiser. In the epilog, deprecating the harshness of the treaty, he says: “It is at all events possible that the wider view of a generation later than this may be one in which Germany will be judged more gently than the Allies can judge her today. We do not now look on the French revolution as our forefathers looked on it.... And here some enlargement of the spirit seems to be desirable in our own interest.” Contents: Introduction: Diplomacy before the war; The German attitude before the war; The military preparations; Epilog; Index.