Now It Can Be Told - Philip GIBBS

In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, Ibelieve, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial ofmen's courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happenagain--surely--if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of thehearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only asit appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers onall the fronts where conditions were the same...

The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war andof all war--not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather asthe truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, outof their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, howeverpainful, to add something to the world's knowledge out of which men ofgood-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between onepeople and another, some new code of international morality, preventingor at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years'sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.
- Summary by Philip Gibbs, from the Preface