PUBLISHER’S NOTE

As I have been publicly criticized for undertaking the issue of the English edition of this book, for the most part by people who have not read it, I am taking the somewhat unusual course of giving a brief explanation of my point of view.

In the first place, Dr. Sven Hedin’s book is essentially a record of facts as he saw them. He is a trained observer, and there can be no question of his veracity. Hitherto, for facts with regard to the German Armies and their organisation we have had to rely on such accounts as the German official communiqués chose to give us, which nobody believes; or, as an alternative, on the accounts published in our own press, which, owing to the strictness of the censorship, were mostly gathered from accounts furnished by prisoners or our own soldiers. The prisoners were naturally pessimistic and our men optimistic. Hence the general impression formed has been that the German organisation had gone to pieces, that their troops were short of food and clothes and that their ammunition was poor.

How far this is from the truth these pages will show, and it is surely desirable to publish a book that for the first time gives us a comprehensive idea of the wonderful organisation against which we are fighting. To my mind it is one of the things chiefly needed to stimulate both our workers and our recruiting.

Again, is it not well to let the English nation know, for instance, that those 600,000 troops which our gallant 120,000 successfully withstood at Ypres were not ill-clad, ill-fed levies, but magnificently equipped troops with a machine-like organisation behind them?

There is also the question of Dr. Sven Hedin’s anti-English opinions, which are quite distinct from his record of facts. But why should these not appear in this country where those of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, Treitschke and Cramb have been universally read and their publication applauded? His reflections are of course intensely irritating to any British subject, but they cannot possibly affect the British cause. On the contrary, their publication will probably do good, for there is nothing like a little tail-twisting to rouse the British Lion!

They afford only one more example of the truth that Lord Rosebery enunciated the other day that “foreigners have never understood Englishmen and Englishmen have never understood foreigners.”

These opinions, however, though evidently accepted from official Germany without question or examination, do not lessen the value of Dr. Sven Hedin’s record of personal experiences. For he is so obviously honest. Indeed, again and again he naively records little facts which really tell against his case.

Dr. Hedin’s personal position is not for me to discuss, but I give his book intact, omitting only, at his own request, a few passages dealing with Swedish politics of purely local interest, and the British public can form its own judgment both of the author and of his views.

If that judgment is unfavourable I hope it will not prevent them from taking his facts to heart.

JOHN LANE

WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST