Conan Doyle's History of the War

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Conan Doyle's History of the War is an article published in The New-York Times on 21 january 1917.

Review of Arthur Conan Doyle's first volume of The British Campaign in France and Flanders.


Conan Doyle's History of the War

The New-York Times (21 january 1917, section 6, p. 18)

First Volume of the Series Reviews the British Campaign in France and Flanders — Some Recent War Books

A history of the Great War. Volume 1.: The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1914. By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: George H. Doran Company. $2.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is, it must be remembered, the author of a study of "The Great Boer War," and has acted recently as official British observer of the Italian armies. His preparation as a historian of the present conflict is therefore very much more specific than the careless reader might realise from the mere association of Sir Arthur's name with his best-known works — though "Sherlock Holmes" itself offers sufficient proof of its author's keenness of observation. From the outbreak of the present war he has been devoting his energies to the collection and preparation of material for an exhaustive history: other volumes will follow. Already in this first book he has divided the war into three parts: 1914, the year of resistance; 1915, "the long anxious year of equilibrium," and following that "the year of restoration which will at least begin, if it does not finish, the victory of the champions of freedom." It is of the first shock and the first resistance that this volume treats.

Specifically, it treats of the first shock to Great Britain, and the first resistance offered by the British armies. If the first volume is typical of them all. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's history of the war is to be a history of Great Britain's part in it. Of France and Belgium he says, even in the story of those first months, very little. He is writing from the British point of view, for those who are primarily interested in Great Britain, what the British contributions, losses, endurances were. Therein this history of the war differs greatly, for instance, from Hilaire Belloc's series of military studies. But although emphasis upon Great Britain's part in the 1914 campaigns in France and Flanders narrows down the reader's gathering of information to a very small part of the actual operations of that year, the information is of the sort that otherwise we might entirely lose. The heroic resistance of Belgium, the magnificent valor of France overshadow all else in the early months of the war; and England's great part was played upon the sea. Yet Great Britain did send soldiers to France and Flanders; they did fight, and win, and lose, and die; they did help the French and Belgian armies, they did render important aid in the battle of the Marne; they did hear the brunt of the fighting at Ypres. While the great new armies, were being enlisted and trained at home, there were many Britons fighting on the continent in 1914, and although the British land forces at that time were small they were gloriously valiant.

So it is well to read of the British part in all that Autumn's fighting — at Mons, on the Marne, on the Aisne, at Ypres. And it is well to read it as it is written here — a clear, detailed history. Occasionally, as in descriptions of phases of the first battle of Ypres, there are flashes of dramatic quality in the writing of the book. But for the most part it is a "straightaway" narrative, depending for its force not upon any charm, or, intensity in its presentation, but upon its quiet, lucid, well-poised record of events. The author writes his history with admirable detachment, painstaking care, and his book, though filled with interesting detail, is never crowded.

John Buchan is writing Nelson's "History of the War" in a series of small volumes that cover the entire field of operations all over the world. It is high tribute to the author's ability simply to state that his narrative does not become confused. He handles the intricacies of the Balkans with the same quiet clearness that marks his treatment of the attacks on Verdun. In this volume he begins with General Townshend's surrender, writes of the war in the Levant, of the Russian front, of the battle of Jutland, of Italy's part, and ends on the second battle of Verdun.