Excerpt from My War Diary, 1918 This simple, every-day record of the experiences through which one French family has lived since August, 1914, may seem at first sight a charming, but not very important contribution to the literature of the war. But if we accept Henry Cabot Lodge's dictum that "one fact is gossip, and that two related facts are history," we shall realise in closing the book how much history we have absorbed in a Jourdainesque kind of ignorance. The cure at Mareuil, the little grandsons finding a German skull, the lawn sacrificed to potatoes, the roses rising triumphant over utilitarianism, the good-byes at the railroad-stations, the Christmas tree, the friendly talks ... all these may be trifles in one way; but they are making history. After all, we know more about the Lilliputians than about the Brobdingnagians, and they are more illustrative of Swift. This story of the past war months is like a rich fabric so cunningly woven that the rare and restrained touches of emotion stand out in brilliant relief against the neutral - no, that word has fallen into disrepute - against the sober tones of the daily background. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com 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."