SOURCE: "Tietjens, the Great War, and England," in Ford Madox Ford's Novels: A Critical Study, University of Minnesota Press, 1962, pp. 190-256.

Meixner is an American author and educator. In the following excerpt, he analyzes Some Do Not, the first of the four Tietjens novels, and asserts that Parade's End should be considered a trilogy with a sequel rather than a tetralogy.

The four novels of the Tietjens series, although published separately, have in recent years been gathered together under the comprehensive title of Parade's End. But should Ford's work be considered, in fact, as a tetralogy? Or is it more accurately a trilogy, with The Last Post as sequel? Robie Macauley, in his introduction to Parade's End, has supported the first position, urging that the four should be considered as one book: "I think it can be comprehended in no other way.… Without The Last Post, the novel...