In 'The Last Shot', which appeared only a few months before the
Great War began, drawing from my experience in many wars, I
attempted to describe the character of a conflict between two great
European land-powers, such as France and Germany.

"You were wrong in some ways," a friend writes to me, "but in other
ways it is almost as if you had written a play and they were following
your script and stage business."

Wrong as to the duration of the struggle and its bitterness and the
atrocious disregard of treaties and the laws of war by one side; right
about the part which artillery would play; right in suggesting the
stalemate of intrenchments when vast masses of troops occupied the
length of a frontier. Had the Germans not gone through Belgium and
attacked on the shorter line of the Franco-German boundary, the
parallel of fact with that of prediction would have been more
complete. As for the ideal of 'The Last Shot', we must await the
outcome to see how far it shall be fulfilled by a lasting peace.

Then my friend asks, "How does it make you feel?" Not as a prophet;
only as an eager observer, who finds that imagination pales beside
reality. If sometimes an incident seemed a page out of my novel, I
was reminded how much better I might have done that page from life;
and from life I am writing now.

I have seen too much of the war and yet not enough to assume the
pose of a military expert; which is easy when seated in a chair at