About this ebook
For the benefit of tourists who wish to visit the battlefields and mutilated towns of France we have tried to produce a work combining a practical guide with a history.
Such a visit should be a pilgrimage, not merely a journey across a ravaged land. Seeing is not enough, one must understand: a ruin is more moving when one knows what has caused it; a stretch of country which might seem dull and uninteresting to the unenlightened eye, becomes transformed at the thought of the battles which have raged there.
We have, therefore, prefaced the description of our journeys by a short account of the events which took place in the vicinity, and we have done our best to make this account quite clear by the use of many illustrations and maps.
In the course of the description we give a brief military commentary on the numerous views and panoramas contained in the book.
When we come across a place that is interesting either from an archæological or an artistic point of view, there we halt, even though the war has passed it by; that the tourist may realise it was to preserve intact this heritage of history and beauty that so many of our heroes have fallen.
Our readers will not find any attempt at literary effect in these pages; the truth is too beautiful and tragic to be altered for the sake of embellishing the story. We have, therefore, after carefully sifting the great volume of evidence available, selected only that obtained from official documents or from reliable eye-witnesses.
This book was written before the end of the war, even then the country over which it leads the reader had long been freed. The wealth of illustration in this work allows the intending tourist to make a preliminary trip in imagination, until such time as circumstances permit of his undertaking a journey in reality beneath the sunny skies of France.
Such a visit should be a pilgrimage, not merely a journey across a ravaged land. Seeing is not enough, one must understand: a ruin is more moving when one knows what has caused it; a stretch of country which might seem dull and uninteresting to the unenlightened eye, becomes transformed at the thought of the battles which have raged there.
We have, therefore, prefaced the description of our journeys by a short account of the events which took place in the vicinity, and we have done our best to make this account quite clear by the use of many illustrations and maps.
In the course of the description we give a brief military commentary on the numerous views and panoramas contained in the book.
When we come across a place that is interesting either from an archæological or an artistic point of view, there we halt, even though the war has passed it by; that the tourist may realise it was to preserve intact this heritage of history and beauty that so many of our heroes have fallen.
Our readers will not find any attempt at literary effect in these pages; the truth is too beautiful and tragic to be altered for the sake of embellishing the story. We have, therefore, after carefully sifting the great volume of evidence available, selected only that obtained from official documents or from reliable eye-witnesses.
This book was written before the end of the war, even then the country over which it leads the reader had long been freed. The wealth of illustration in this work allows the intending tourist to make a preliminary trip in imagination, until such time as circumstances permit of his undertaking a journey in reality beneath the sunny skies of France.
For the benefit of tourists who wish to visit the battlefields and mutilated towns of France we have tried to produce a work combining a practical guide with a history.
Such a visit should be a pilgrimage, not merely a journey across a ravaged land. Seeing is not enough, one must understand: a r...
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