*****In the story of a great struggle we meet gaps and discrepancies.

---How and why did men and women do what they did? And how can we be sure they did what the record may seem to show they did? And of what great war has the final story been written that clears all disputes as to how it moved and what came of it?

---If those who are gone who had their parts and roles in it could be summoned back to tell of the gaps and discrepancies, they might give unexpected answers to questions. And many witnesses on being dug up and given speech might again be as noncommittal as ever on this or that circumstance.

---This scroll presets events of wild passionate onrush side by side with cruel, grinding monotony-and second and third readings bring out things not seen at first.

---The chronicles are abstracted from a record so stupendous, so changing and tumultuous, that anyone dealing with the vast actual evidence cannot use the whole of it, nor tell all of the story.

---Supposing all could be told, it would take a far longer time to tell it than was taken to act it in life.

---Therefore, the teller does the best he can and picks what is to him plain, moving, and important-though sometimes what is important may be tough reading, tangled, involved, sometimes gradually taking on interest, even mystery, because of the gaps and discrepancies.

---Many men and women now faded and gone, lived this book before it could be written.

---They do and say in these pages what they did and said in life-as seen and known to the eyes and ears, the mind and spirit, of themselves or other men and women of their own time.

---Some of them spoke with action, some with words, some with both action and words.

---What they say in words, within quotation marks, in these pages, is from sources deemed authentic, unless otherwise indicated.

---What they say by act or deed is often beyond fathoming, because it happened in a time of great storm.