To set the cause above renown,To love the game beyond the prize,To honour, while you strike him down,The foe that comes with fearless eyes To count the life of battle good,And clear the land that gave you birth,Bring nearer yet the brotherhoodThat binds the brave of all the earth….- Sir Henry Newbolt. The reader may rest assured that the deeds narrated, and the scenes and personalities pictured, in this book, are not the vain outpourings of a film–fed imagination, but the re–arrangement of actual happenings and the assembling of real people who have actually lived, loved, fought and suffered-and some of whom, indeed, live, love, fight and suffer to this day.įailure (Out of the Unfinished Memoirs of Major Henri De Beaujolais of the Spahis and the French Secret Service) One of them, indeed, was conducted over a French troopship, and his simple wonder at the marvels of the Roumi was rather touching, and of pleasing interest to all who witnessed it…. He further offered to accompany the critic (at the latter's expense) to the merry town of Figuig in Northern Africa, and there to show him the tomb–stone (with its official epitaph) of a girl who served for many years, in the Spahis, as a cavalry trooper, rose to the rank of Sergeant, and remained, until her death in battle, quite unsuspected of being what she was-a European woman.Īnd in this book, nothing is set forth as having happened which has not happened-including the adoption of two ex–Legionaries by an Arab tribe, and their rising to Sheikdom and to such power that they were signatories to a treaty with the Republic.
The Author admitted the justice of the criticism, and then, as now, put forth the same feeble defence that, although perfectly impossible, it was the simple truth. In reviewing The Wages of Virtue, for example, a very distinguished literary critic remarked that the incident of a girl being found in the French Foreign Legion was absurd, and merely added an impossibility to a number of improbabilities. The only defence that the Author can offer is that, although perfectly impossible, they actually happened. The Author would like to anticipate certain of the objections which may be raised by some of the kindly critics and reviewers who gave so friendly and encouraging a chorus of praise to Beau Geste, The Wages of Virtue, and The Stepsons of France.Ĭertain of the events chronicled in these books were objected to, as being impossible.
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