Excerpt from The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time; A Personal Narrative<br><br>This is not a war book. It has not been my privi lege at any stage of the Great blood-letting to come into close contact with the spectacular clash and din of the fray. Abler pens than mine, many of them wielded by the neutral hands of American colleagues, are immortalizing the terrible, yet irresistibly fascinating, scenes of this most stupendous drama. But every drama has its scenario and its prologue and its behind the-curtain scenes - none ever written was so rich in these preliminaries and accessories as is Europe's epic. To have witnessed and lived through some of these was vouchsafed me; and to take American readers with me down the line of the past year's recollections and impressions is the sole object of this unpretentious effort. History, Carlyle said, was some one's record of personal experiences. To such experiences, as far as possible, the pages of this book are confined.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.