Excerpt from The Story of the Great War
The justification for this book must be found in a remark once made to me by an Oxford professor. I had made a seminar report and had "demonstrated" that nothing adequate could possibly be known about the subject until elaborate research had been prosecuted. "Yes, yes," said the professor. "Very good, but what are we going to think in the meantime? Just tell us something brief and probable." That is exactly what I have tried to do in this book.
It would be idle to pretend that an adequate history of the war can be written so soon after the event or within such brief compass as this volume. But it is equally idle to suppose that we who have lived and fought the war can afford to wait before we think something about it until the historians can complete any portion of the monographs upon which any truly scientific notion of the war must rest. Surely, it is scant comfort to us to know that our grandchildren may understand the war. We need to know something about it now, for our opinion of its origin and course will be significant elements in every relevant decision we reach on statecraft and reconstruction. Nor am I at all prepared to admit that the generation who fought the war is entirely in error as to why and for what it was fought. Over the details of battles and diplomacy future students may wrangle to their hearts content, but the spiritual truth about the reasons for the conflict, and the spiritual forces which won it, I feel sure we correctly apprehend now. One of the most essential facts to make clear, I feel, is this very spiritual purpose with which we fought the war.
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