PREFACE
Reading edition
Strangely caught up out of the rut and routine of Paris war-work, not even choosing my direction (the Fates did that), contributing, however, the eternal readiness of my soul, which the poet says is all, I was conveyed, as on a magic carpet, to the blue valleys and the rust and gold and jasper hills of Alsace, where the color is laid on thick, thick. There I was one, during many historic days, of the delightful group of blue-clad, scarred, decorated officers forming the French Military Mission, which since the autumn of 1914 had administered the little reconquered triangle of Alsace and planted in it the seed for the re-Gallicizing of Alsace-Lorraine. It was a bit of French history in the making, which detached itself quite peculiarly free from the mass of war happenings, somewhat as a medallion from that against which it is placed.
My little book shows how humanly and simply the men of the French Military Mission, accustomed to supreme events, together with a woman from over the seas, lived through those thirteen historic days preceding the armistice. It will perhaps be worth the reader’s while—I mean the nice, bright, perceptive reader’s while—for mostly the throbbing, high-colored beauty of Alsace is veiled by dusty, argumentative, statistical pamphlets, so many of which are printed, so few of which are read. I once saw a great building full of such, and dozens of them were presented me for my sins, though I had never thought to read another book on Alsace, much less to write one. I see once again how foolish is the man or woman who says to the fountain, “I will never more drink of thy water.”
In this record there are no polemics and no statistics. I have added nothing to each day’s happenings, which run along as life is apt to run along, even in supreme moments, and, Heaven help me, I have concealed nothing. It is because of all this that perhaps those who, like myself, have wept much and laughed much in their lives, will not ungladly accompany me to a corner on the sorrowful and glorious chart of the autumn of 1918.
Edith O’Shaughnessy.
Paris, 33 rue de l’Université, February, 1919.