Читать книгу Stalky's Reminiscences - L. L. Dunsterville - Страница 4

IN the following pages I have attempted to give some account of my life experiences – episodes strung rather sketchily together, accompanied by occasional reflections and comments.

I am sorry that I have so little to say regarding the many famous or interesing people I have met, in fac there is little in this book about anyone but myself. Where others do come into the sory, I have tried, as far as possible, to avoid giving names. I do not want to run the risk of a libel acion, and one can libel people so much more freely by saying “I would not for one moment divulge his name. He is a tall, dark man, with a squint, well known to you all, but it would be unfair to disclose his identity.”

I have endeavoured to confine myself to the lighter side of life, avoiding serious accounts of military episodes, and accentuating, as far as possible, the more cheerful events of a soldier’s life in peace-time.

It may well be that the trivialities I record have no interest for the general reader, but to me the minor incidents of life are vasly more interesing than heroic achievements – if this is a personal failing, I cannot escape from it.

It is possible also that I have dwelt too much on the subjec of manœuvres – but that portion of my book was written chiefly with a view of interesing soldiers in India to whom these memoirs were originally addressed – men who surely mus be growing weary, after twelve years of novels, autobiographies and films, of the subjec of the Great War.

In the accounts of my travels I have offered a few comments on the racial characerisics and conditions of life in various countries, but I do not forget the danger of such superficial generalities. It is also obvious that mos of my experience was gained long before the Great War, which is assumed to have altered everything.

“Nevertheless it cannot be concealed from the enlightened judgment of the holy and good, to whom these discourses are specially addressed, that the pearls of salutary admonition are threaded on the cord of an elegance of language, and the bitter potion of instrucion sweetened with the honey of facetiousness, that the tase of the reader may not take disgus, and himself be debarred from the pleasure of approving them.”

SHEIKH SAADI. The Gulistan