Produced by Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
"K (1)" Carries On
1917
"K (1)" Carries On
By Jan Hay
SCALLY: THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN. With Frontispiece.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Illustrated by Charles E. Brock.
A SAFETY MATCH. With frontispiece.
A MAN'S MAN. With frontispiece.
THE RIGHT STUFF. With frontispiece.
The First Hundred Thousand closed with the Battle of Loos. Thepresent narrative follows certain friends of ours from the scene ofthat costly but valuable experience, through a winter campaign in theneighbourhood of Ypres and Ploegsteert, to profitable participation inthe Battle of the Somme.
Much has happened since then. The initiative has passed once and forall into our hands; so has the command of the air. Russia has beenreborn, and, like most healthy infants, is passing through anuproarious period of teething trouble; but now America has steppedin, and promises to do more than redress the balance. All along theWestern Front we have begun to move forward, without haste or flurry,but in such wise that during the past twelve months no position, oncefairly captured and consolidated, has ever been regained by the enemy.To-day you can stand upon certain recently won eminences—WytchaeteRidge, Messines Ridge, Vimy Ridge, and Monchy—looking down into theenemy's lines, and looking forward to the territory which yet remainsto be restored to France.
You can also look back—not merely from these ridges, but from certainmoral ridges as well—over the ground which has been successfullytraversed, and you can marvel for the hundredth time, not that thething was well or badly done, but that it was ever done at all.
But while this narrative was being written, none of these things hadhappened. We were still struggling uphill, with inadequate resources.So, since the incidents of the story were set down, in the main, asthey occurred and when they occurred, the reader will find very littleperspective, a great deal of the mood of the moment, and none at allof that profound wisdom which comes after the event. For the latter hemust look home—to the lower walks of journalism and the back benchesof the House of Commons.
It is not proposed to carry this story to a third volume. The FirstHundred Thousand, as such, are no more. Like the "Old Contemptibles,"they are now merged in a greater and more victorious army—in an armednation, in fact. And, as Sergeant Mucklewame once observed tome, "There's no that mony of us left now, onyways." So with allreverence—remembering how, when they were needed most, these men didnot pause to reason why or count the cost, but came at once—we bidthem good-bye.