Excerpt from With the Guns, in South Africa
The writer"s apology or excuse for publishing this book is that many people asked that it be done. The letters which form the chapters were written home from the front and published in the columns of the Ottawa Citizen and Hamilton Spectator. They were written during the not abundant leisure of an artillery subaltern in the field with the mounted forces that went out as Canada"s second contingent to South Africa. After I came home people were good enough to say they would like to have these letters in book form so as to preserve them. A number of newspapers also supplemented the suggestion. The fact that some of my dearest journalistic foes were among those that lured me on to make a book did not immediately arouse my suspicions. They may have meant well. Anyway, here is the book.
In these letters I endeavored to give a pen and ink panorama of the war as I saw it - to show my friends at home the war through my eyes. When it is remembered that the letters were written often under heavy pressure, good natured people will excuse their imperfections. On the other hand, possibly, the fact that they contain rough and ready impressions of soldier life by one living the life may have also caused these impressions to contain more local color than might otherwise have been the case. If occasionally they are too redolent of the smoke of goat dung fires, dead horses, iodoform and stale blood, please remember this. War is not a parlor game. As Huck Finn said about the Pilgrim"s Progress, you may find "some of the statements interestin", but tough." Well, war is both. One merit only I claim: I have tried to make the picture true to life.
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