The manuscript was submitted to me by a young officer of the R.F.A., home from the front on leave...He explained that he had brought with him from France a bundle of papers which he had found in one of the dug-outs of an abandoned gun position. He discovered the papers secreted in a dark corner wedged in between a post and the wall of one of the bunks. There was no indication of the writer's name or of his unit, and the name of the girl he had loved was never recorded...On thinking the matter over, the officer began to feel more and more strongly that they ought to be given back to that woman...Reading the tattered manuscript I was from the first impressed with its literary value; but as I read on I became deeply absorbed in its poignant human importance...Extract from the Preface by John Lane. Publisher.