_May 26th._

It is a bold thing, I fear, to offer the public yet more letters based
on a journey through the battle-fields of France--especially at a
moment when impressions are changing so fast, when the old forms of
writing about the war seem naturally out of date, or even distasteful,
and the new are not yet born. Yet perhaps in this intermediate period,
the impressions of one who made two journeys over some of the same
ground in 1916 and 1917, while the great struggle was at its height,
and on this third occasion found herself on the Western front just two
months after the Armistice, may not be unwelcome to those who, like
myself, feel the need of detaching as soon as possible some general
and consistent ideas from the infinite complexity, the tragic and
bewildering detail, of the past four years. The motive which sent me
to France three months ago was the wish to make clear to myself if I
could, and thereby to others, the true measure of the part played by
the British Empire and the British Armies in the concluding campaigns
of the war. I knew that if it could be done at all at the present
moment--and by myself--it could only be done in a very broad and
summary way; and also that its only claim to value would lie in its
being a faithful report, within the limits I had set myself, of the
opinions of those who were actually at the heart of things, _i.e._, of
the British Higher Command, and of individual officers who had taken
an active part in the war. For the view taken in these pages of last
year's campaigns, I have had, of course, the three great despatches of
the British Commander-in-Chief on which to base the general sketch I
had in mind; but in addition I have had much kind help from the
British Headquarters in France, where officers of the General Staff
were still working when I paid a wintry visit to the famous Ecole
Militaire at the end of January; supplemented since my return to