Transcriber’s Note
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THE WAYS OF WAR
Lafayette, Dublin, photographers.
Emery Walker phot.
Thos M. Kettle
THE WAYS OF WAR
BY
PROFESSOR T. M. KETTLE
LIEUT. 9TH DUBLIN FUSILIERS
WITH A MEMOIR BY HIS WIFE
MARY S. KETTLE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1917
TO
MY DEAR WIFE AND COMRADE
EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS IN VERITATEM
vii
PREFATORY NOTE
Perhaps the order of the chapters in the presentbook requires a word of explanation. Theyhave a natural sequence as the confessions of anIrish man of letters as to why he felt called uponto offer up his life in the war for the freedom ofthe world. Kettle was one of the most brilliantfigures both in the Young Ireland and YoungEurope of his time. The opening chapters revealhim as a Nationalist concerned about the libertynot only of Ireland—though he never for a momentforgot that—but of every nation, smalland great. He hoped to make these chapters partof a separate book, expounding the Irish attitudeto the war; but unfortunately, as one must think,the War Office would not permit an Irish Officerto put his name to a work of the kind. After thechapters describing the inevitable sympathy of anIrishman with Serbia and Belgium—little nationsattacked by two Imperial bullies—comes an accountof the tragic scenes Kettle himself witnessedin Belgium, where he served as a war-correspondentin the early days of the war. “Silhouettes fromthe Front,” which follow, describe what he sawand felt later on, when, having taken a commissionin the Dublin Fusiliers, he accompanied hisregiment to France in time to take part in theviiiBattle of the Somme. Then some chapters containinghints of that passion for France which wasone of the great passions of his life. One of these,entitled “The New France,” was written beforethe war had made the world realise that Franceis still the triumphant flag-bearer of Europeancivilisation. Then, in “The Gospel of the Devil,”we have an examination of the armed philosophiesthat have laid so much of France and therest of Europe desolate. The book closes with“Trade or Honour?”—an appeal to the Allies topreserve high and disinterested motives in endingthe war as in beginning it, and to turn a deaf earto those political hucksters to whom gain meansmore than freedom. Thus “The Ways of War”is a book, not only of patriotism, but of internationalidealism. Above all, it is a passionatehuman document—the “apologia pro vita sua” ofa soldier who died for freedom.
L.
Many of the chapters in this book have already appeared invarious newspapers