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Leaves from a Field Note-Book By: John Hartman Morgan (1876-1955) |
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MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO
LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE BOOK BY J.H. MORGAN LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
"And my delights were with the sons of men."
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1916
TO LIEUT. GENERAL SIR C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. ADJUTANT GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
PREFACE
This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during
the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as
Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His
official duties during that period involved daily visits to the
headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field,
and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the
trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance
with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So
much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of
the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down.
The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major
E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger,
for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the
chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete
without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D.
Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the
discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the
unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the
pages of the Nineteenth Century and After , under the title to which
the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his
obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to
republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of
Blackwood's Magazine for permission to reprint the short story,
"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the Westminster Gazette in whose
hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared sometimes
anonymously. The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form
of what, to borrow a French term, is called the conte . The writer has
adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of
suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of
"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and
impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events
amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own
duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed
and the events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in
fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to
"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that.
"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true"
stories using truth in the sense of veracity not value and the facts
came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction
has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the
principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be
known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are
"real" I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as
they were and are to me the names are assumed. It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut. General Sir
C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to
whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no
words can discharge. J. H. M. January 1916.
CONTENTS
I THE BASE
PAGE
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