I OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA It was at Taranto that we embarked for Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were sent out from England in one of two ways—either all the way round the Cape of Good Hope, or by train through France and Italy down to the desolate little seaport of Taranto, and thence by transport over to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and on down the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The latter method was by far the shorter,... more...

MADAME D'ARBLAY. BY LORD MACAULAY. Frances Burney was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in Shropshire and was possessed of considerable estates in that county. Unhappily, many years before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of set purpose and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James Macburney... more...

NOVEMBER, 1862. Secretary Chase — French Mediation — the Decembriseur — Diplomatic Bendings. November 18.—In the street a soldier offered to sell me the pay already several months overdue to him. As I could not help him, as gladly I would have done, being poor, he sold it to a curb-stone broker, a street note-shaver. I need not say that the poor soldier sustained a loss of twenty-five per cent. by the operation! He... more...

FOREWORD. "More khaki," sniffed a bored but charming lady, as she glanced at a picture of the poor Yeomanry at Lindley, and then hastily turned away to something of greater interest. I overheard the foregoing at the Royal Academy, soon after my return from South Africa, last May, and thanked the Fates that I was in mufti. It was to a certain extent indicative of the jaded interest with which the War is now being followed by a large proportion of... more...

CHAPTER I. MY BIRTH AND PARENTAGE—EARLY TASTES AND TRAVELS—MARRIAGE, AND WIDOWHOOD. I was born in the town of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, some time in the present century. As a female, and a widow, I may be well excused giving the precise date of this important event. But I do not mind confessing that the century and myself were both young together, and that we have grown side by side into age and consequence. I am a... more...

WITH THOSE WHO WAIT I Once upon a time there wasn't any war. In those days it was my custom to drive over to Château-Thierry every Friday afternoon. The horses, needing no guidance, would always pull up at the same spot in front of the station from which point of vantage, between a lilac bush and the switch house, I would watch for the approaching express that was to bring down our week-end guests. A halt at the bridge head would... more...

CHAPTER I ZICRON-JACOB Thirty-five years ago, the impulse which has since been organized as the Zionist Movement led my parents to leave their homes in Roumania and emigrate to Palestine, where they joined a number of other Jewish pioneers in founding Zicron-Jacob—a little village lying just south of Mount Carmel, in that fertile coastal region close to the ancient Plains of Armageddon. Here I was born; my childhood was passed here in... more...

THE SEVENTH DIVISION 'A telegram, sir!' and a mounted orderly who had ridden over from Larkhill, stood outside my tent at the Bustard's Camp, Salisbury Plain, at 5 a.m., on September 17, 1914. In that remote part of the world so removed from the benefits of ordinary life, we were yet in receipt of our daily papers at that early hour in the morning, and I was enjoying a twenty-four hours' history of the world, at the moderate price of a penny,... more...

THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the... more...

PREFACE This book was written during the three last months of 1915 and the first month of this year in the form of letters from France, Greece, Serbia, and England. The writer visited ten of the twelve sectors of the French front, seeing most of them from the first trench, and was also on the French-British front in the Balkans. Outside of Paris the French cities visited were Verdun, Amiens, St. Die, Arras, Chalons, Nancy, and Rheims. What he... more...