JENA OR SEDAN FROM THE GERMAN OF FRANZ ADAM BEYERLEIN LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 905 b Publishers Note T m German original of this ovel had a larger circulation in the first year of ifs career than any nohel of our days, close upon one quarter of a nzillion copies having been sold. It was praised by some as a superb piece of imaginative literature of fhe realistic school . by others it has been anathematised as a libel on the . great army that made Modern Germany. The truth about it is firobabZy best summarised in the words of a reviewer of the Daily Mail -cc The author holds up the mirror with itn autinlify, wifhorrt fear or passion, and with an unmsakab friend in tention, and asks, Where art thou going Towards Jena or Sedan l If is perhaps unnecessary to remind Ue English reader in txfilanation of the title fhat Jena stands for French supremacy and German defeat-Sedan for German vicfory and a French dlbacle but he should be warned that in this tmthftrl mirror of life there may be defails liable to shock insular notions. The author could not shrink from such in the ful fmeyt of his task, which was to give the fruth-the whole trtrth and nothing but the truth. His work must be judged not on as a novel and assure Zy as such if is a most admirable and artistic piece g of work, but if h s t be regarded akio as the my of a patriot who bves his counfryabove anyfhingin the world. This is most comjleteJy realised in the following opening sentences of a long and cart3fuC review given to the original by Ue Spectator -c The Englishman who is acute distressed by the report of shotlcomings in the German Army can hardly be human. The frank pleasure which the Germans took in our t ou6leiss too recent to be quite forgotten, even by a people so forgetful as we are. But for nll that, only those who crave for the wicked joys of the soul, which grow, the poet tells us, near by the gates of hell, can lay down Herr Beyerleins story without a sense of sadness. In spite of its freshness aizd its humour, there breathes through it that note of disappointment, almost of lassitude, which is not seldom audible in Germany to-day. It is as though the nation, which has travelled such an astonishing distance in the last thirty years, were pausing to ash, 1s this all that has come of it P cc Herr Beyerleins Ueme is Ue decadence of the Germarz Army. That if is decadent he has no doubt at all, and he is a close, careful and not atn friendly observer. But the writer who deals boM and broadly with the German Army is ili reality dealing wifh a much larger subject. The British Anny ak a piece cut from the stuff of which the nation is made, and shaped to a particular end. In Germany the whole material of the nation passes through the Army, and is to some extent shaped and cobured i r z the process it does not come out precisely as it went in. Geman milita y training is an iron pressure to which men cannot be submitted for two years at an iwessionable age and remain unchanged. Symptoms of decay in the Army point, therefore, not only to possible disaster abroad, but to demoralisation at home and if is wifh this aspect of his subject that Hew Beyorlein is chiefly concerned. JENA OR SEDAN CHAPTER I Mdst I go, must I go, Away into the town Swa bian Folk-song. - FRANZ VOGT was on his way home. He carried a neatly tied-up parcel containing the under-linen and the boots that he had been buying in the town. He had trodden this same road a countless number of times during his life but now that he must bid good-bye to it so soon, the old familiar surroundings presented themselves to him in a new light. Of course it was not good-bye for ever, nor was it even as though he were going to America... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.