Title:  The War on All Fronts:  England’s Effort Letters to an American Friend

Author:  Mrs. Humphry Ward

Commentator:  Joseph H. Choate

Release Date:  June 18, 2005 [EBook #16089]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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[Transcriber’s notes:  Original spelling retained, original copyright information retained, italics are indicated by underscores.]

Volume II

England’s Effort

Letters To An American Friend

[Illustration:  Spring-time in the North Sea—­Snow on a British Battleship.]

The War On All Fronts

England’s Effort

Letters To An American Friend

By Mrs. Humphry Ward

With A Preface By Joseph H. Choate

Illustrated

New York Charles Scribner’s Sons 1918

Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner’s sons

Preface

Has England done all she could?

That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and queries of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series of letters, and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is as complete and triumphant as it is thrilling.  Nobody but a woman, an Englishwoman of warm heart, strong brain, and vivid power of observation, could possibly have written these letters which reflect the very soul of England since this wicked and cruel war began.  She has unfolded and interpreted to us, as no one else, I think, has even attempted to do, the development and absolute transformation of English men and women, which, has enabled them, living and dying, to secure for their proud nation under God that “new birth of freedom” which Lincoln at Gettysburg prophesied for his own countrymen.  Really the cause is the same, to secure the selfsame thing, “that government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish from the earth";—­and if any American wishes to know how this has been accomplished, he must read these letters, which were written expressly for our enlightenment.

Mrs. Ward had marvellous qualifications for this patriotic task.  The granddaughter of Doctor Arnold and the niece of Matthew Arnold, from childhood up she has been as deeply interested in politics and in public affairs as she has been in literature, by which she has attained such world-wide fame, and next to English politics, in American politics and American opinion.  She has been a staunch believer in the greatness of America’s future, and has maintained close friendship with leaders of public thought on both sides of the water.  Her only son is a member of Parliament, and is fighting in the war, just as all the able-bodied men she knows are doing.