PREFACE
My readers will be divided between those who think that I have not told enough, that I have told too much, and that I had better have told nothing at all. I bow my head to them all.
The list of those to whom my thanks are due is too long to set out in a preface. It would include the names of my admirable staff, of sailors, soldiers, and civilians of many countries besides our own in almost every walk of life and even of a few of our late enemies. No drama, no film story yet written has been so enthralling as our daily repertory on the dimly-lighted stage set in a corner of the granite building in Westminster. In a century after we, with our war-weariness, are dead and gone the Great War will be a quarry for tales of adventure, of high endeavour, and of splendid achievement: when that time comes even some of the humbler actors who play their part in these pages may be seen through a haze of romance.
My thanks are due to Mr. Milward R. K. Burge for permission to use his verses on the Hôtel Majestic during the Peace Conference.
B. T.
London, 1922.