Excerpt from Pictorial History of the Great War

The need of a popular History of the Great War, which should be at once authoritative and free from bias and weak sentimentalism, is felt by all. This volume is designed to fill this need.

It attempts to encompass the causes of the great conflict, the chief happening of military and political importance during the bloodiest fifty-one months of the world's history and their results and their effects upon the nations involved. An earnest endeavor has been made to take the reader through the most important phases. The limitation of this work to one volume makes the giving of exhaustive details of every incident, every battle, every siege, every advance or retreat, an impossibility. But in this very limitation lies the books greatest value.

To please a tactician, chapters might be devoted to the battles along the Marne, the Somme, the Yser, at Cambrai, or to the struggle before Verdun or to the Russian campaigns. But for the reader who seeks a straightforward, circumstantial narrative of the great war, without its chief events being clouded and obscured by a multiplicity of subsidiary details, this book has been written.

Devotion of time to research by the very best authors and critics has been given that its facts may be clearly and accurately presented. It contains no statements based on rumors, no accounts taken from unauthoritative sources.

The New World undoubtedly was a great determining factor in the overthrow and crushing of junkerism, and for that reason this volume should be of the greatest interest to the peoples of Canada and the United States. Over two and one half million sons of North America crossed to France. Their concentration and transportation was one of the greatest military feats in history. Canada, as a part of the British Empire, naturally became involved first. Her record of service will fill every patriot with a feeling of pride and inspiration. The active share in the war by the United States, though it covered only a little over a year and a half, is the nation's most glorious achievement.

With this in mind, painstaking effort has been made to do the fullest justice to all in recounting the parts played by these nations during the months of their unselfish crusade against autocracy and militarism.

Entertaining visualization of the war is best attained through photographs. Consequently this book has been profusely illustrated with hundreds of scenes officially photographed during the long period of campaigning on all the great fronts. These in themselves tell the narrative in a convincing manner. In securing these pictures, the most skilled men attached to the fighting forces were employed. Many were taken by men who risked death for a "close up."

In preparing this instructive, inspiring and entertaining history, no vital episode of the war has been overlooked. The narrative is complete from the demolition of Liege to the restoration of Peace. It is hoped that it will do full justice to the sacrifice, courage, steadfastness in the face of great difficulties, of the tireless and valorous fighting men of the British Empire, France, Italy, Belgium, Serbia and the United States.

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