Excerpt
DEDICATION
To the soldiers and sailors of the United States and Canada; to the men of the armies and navies of nations allied with us; to the splendid courage and devotion of American, French, British and Belgian women, who have endured in silence the pain of losses worse than death, and never faltered in works of mercy for which no thanks can ever pay; to all the agencies of good that have helped save civilization and the world from the most dreadful menace of all time, this volume is dedicated.
To the honor of those nations upon whom the laurel of victory has descended. To those who have vouchsafed for us the permanence of the higher ideals of humanity and civilization.
To those who have sheltered posterity from the dominance of barbarity, brutality, serfdom, bigotry and degradation.
To those who have striven against the Teuton and the Turk that God-given and God-ordained freedom may triumph.
To those noble stoics of Belgium, of France, of Serbia, of Roumania, of Poland and all other peoples who have felt the mailed fist of the ruthless oppressor; who have looked upon their devastated fields, their dismantled cathedrals, their violated hearth-stones and the desecrated graves of their kindred, and that peace, tranquillity, contentment and prosperity may again be restored to them in bounteous meed.
To those heroes who by their valor, their vigor and their inspired devotion to right and patriotism have so nobly fought and conquered.
To those martyrs whom God in his immutable manifestations has chosen for the ultimate sacrifice of their lives upon the altar of freedom and humanity's cause.
In honor to these who have attained this glorious victory. In honor to the commingling flags of the allied nations reflecting in their rainbow hues a covenant of everlasting peace in this their hour of triumph, may we all consecrate our purposes and our lives to a brotherhood of mankind, a spirit of broadest humanity and universal peace on earth.
—L.J. Robinson.
PREFACE
With the signing of an armistice November 11, 1918, by the plenipotentiaries of the nations at war, active hostilities were halted while the sweeping terms of the truce were being complied with by Germany. The collapse of the Teutonic forces came with a suddenness that was surprising, and the collapse was complete. The German army and navy ceased to be a menace to the civilized world—and all civilization rejoiced with an exceeding great joy.
Remarkable events in the world's history followed with amazing rapidity, and are duly recorded in all their interesting details in these pages. The flight and abdication of the Kaiser; the abject surrender of the German high seas fleet and submarines to the British Grand Fleet and its American associates; the withdrawal of the defeated German armies from Belgium and France; the return of the French flag to Alsace and Lorraine; the occupation of Metz, Strassburg, Cologne, and Coblentz by Allied and American forces, and the memorable entry of Belgian troops as conquerors into Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen); the sailing of the President of the United States to take part in the Peace Conference—all these events and many others form part of the marvelous record of the recent past, furnishing material that has never been equaled for the use of the historian....