There is no attempt made in the little sketches which this book contains to deal historically with events of the war. It is but a small Souvenir de la guerre—a series of vignettes of things as they struck me at the time, and later. I have written of types, not of individuals, and less of action than of rest. The horror of war at its worst is fit subject for a master hand alone. – Summary by the author, Capt. Ralph W. Bell [chương_files]
In publishing this book I have no intention whatsoever to offer a work of great literary value. As such it would undoubtedly be a failure, because, being of a non-English-speaking race, and only having been in this country a comparatively short time before going over to France, I cannot claim a mastery of the English language. It has merely been my intention to express the spirit which led me to America and thence with Pershing’s Expeditionary Forces to France. (From Introductory) [chương_files]
Siegfried Sassoon was one of the first to write poetry about the brutal reality of war, based on his real-life experiences in the trenches. He served in World War I on the Western Front and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery under fire. However, he later became a convicted pacifist, threw his Military Cross into the Mersey river, and continued to write and publish poems and political statements against the war. His poems capture the despair he felt towards the war overall, and he paints vivid word pictures that make the reader “pray you’ll never know, the hell where youth and laughter go”. (Summary by Elizabby) Note: This work is in the public domain in the USA and Canada. If you are not in the USA, please verify the copyright status of these works in your own country before downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright laws. [chương_files]
Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidoscopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.(Professor Meredith Neuman) [chương_files]
This little gem of a book contains twelve poems about World War I. There is more to it than its intrinsic value as verse. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) set three of the poems (The Fourth Of August, To Women, For The Fallen) in his cantata The Spirit of England (1915-1917). Since its composing and musical setting, For The Fallen has held an honored place in every November 11th Remembrance Day for Britain and the Commonwealth (Memorial Day for Americans). Moved by the opening of the Great War and the already high number of casualties of the British Expeditionary Force, in 1914 Laurence Binyon wrote his For the Fallen, with its Ode of Remembrance, as he was visiting the cliffs on the north Cornwall coast,… The third and fourth verses of the poem (although often just the fourth) have so been claimed as a tribute to all casualties of war, regardless of nation. – Summary by Wikipedia and david wales [chương_files]
Harriot Stanton Blatch, a suffragist in her own right, was the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton who was one of the champions of women’s rights and a force in the suffragist movement. In this volume, Blatch focuses on the mobilization of women during World War I, both in Europe and American. These courageous women stepped into roles formerly the domain of men and provided the essential services crucial to the success of the outcome of the war. – Summary by Larry Wilson [chương_files]
“… this war was not one of mere destruction. It set men to thinking as they had never thought before. It intensified their inventive faculties, and as a result, the world is richer in many ways. Lessons of thrift and economy have been taught us. Manufacturers have learned the value of standardization. The business man has gained an appreciation of scientific research. The whole story is too big to be contained within the covers of a single book, but I have selected the more important and interesting inventions and have endeavored to describe them in simple language for the benefit of the reader who is not technically trained.” Bond was the sometime editor of Scientific American magazine. ( Book Preface, David Wales) [chương_files]
“Although it is still a crude machine—in view of the perfected apparatus which is the aim of thoughtful designers—the aeroplane has demonstrated, in a conclusive way, its value as an instrument of war.” – Summary by Authors [chương_files]
A collection of true stories of the high seas, from the nineteenth century. Shipwrecks, mutiny, life and death decision-making — all far from home, while pitting themselves against the elements. The romance of the seafaring life is depicted in its brutal reality. – Summary by Lynne Thompson [chương_files]
An educated gentleman, Mr Manington has given an insight into the unusual experiences of an Englishman in the French Foreign Legion, such as no ordinary “mercenary” could have done. Most of the narrative deals with Tonquin, and the fighting there against the rebels in their forest fastnesses. Incidentally, in giving an account of his friendship for the native sergeant, Doy-Tho, the author has been able to impart to the pages of the book an Oriental atmosphere that we think will prove attractive to the reader. – Summary by Editors’ Note [chương_files]
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