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EDWARD S. BEACH RIDGEFIELD CONN.
NATIONAL CITY BUILDING 17 EAST 42ND STREET CORNER MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK
December 20, 1921.
John Buchan, Esqr., c/o Thomas Nelson & Sons, Publishers, London, England.
Dear Sir:
As sole and exclusive owner of twenty volumes of Nelson's History of the War, written by you, I claim the right to enter a protest:
There isn't enough of it!
Admitting, for the sake of the argument, that you and your publishers know more about your and their business than I do, yet I want two or three more volumes to round out the work, and should hope that every one who has a set of this history would desire the same additional matter. So, I beg leave to suggest:
First: A volume amplifying the final conflict or campaign preceding the Armistice: the German drive towards Amiens: the struggles of the British and the French and the Americans , and other Allies, throughout the Western Line, in the Argonne, etc.
I felt, in reading the last volume, that it gave evidence of weariness with the work and gladness on your part to get it off your hands. But has not the time come when another full volume can be
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added containing matter descriptive of the final campaign; and addenda descriptive of many points on which you did not have clear information at the times when you wrote the earlier volumes.
Second: I, for one, would like to have a volume of statistics, - a sort of ledger showing the number of troops engaged, battle losses, etc, etc. A book to which one might go for specific information for ascertainment of the cost of the war, munitions, supplies, military establishments, etc, etc.
Third: Why not a volume outlining the Treaty of Versailles, and containing the detailed organization of the League of Nations, its officers, personnel, number of clerks, salaries and compensation; the cases or points decided by it.
I suppose I have read your history through from beginning to end at least half a dozen times; and I am again re-reading it.
From first to last I have been impressed with what I should call the British spirit of sportsmanship, - fair play, candor, - in your work. There are mighty few of us in this country who, if we had had the information and the ability to write a history of the war contemporaneously with your work, would have kept our pens, or even attempted to have
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kept our pens, from bitter words of detestation and hatred of the Germans. But you are self-restrained, and wisely so, I suppose. Now that the war is over, there are a good many of us who are perfectly willing to bury the hatchet and carry on without indulging ourselves in natural bitter recollections.
I hope the great work now being undertaken at Washington will result in approximate quietude for two or three generations at least. The devil appears now to be very sick at the stomach and filled with the good intention of becoming a saint. But I apprehend that in fifty years, more or less, he will have forgotten all about sainthood and be at his old tricks.
Very truly yours,
Edward S Beach
ESB/HB
P.S. Has it occured to you that the Washington conference may be a fulfillment of Lord Rosebery's forecast, in his preface to your first volume, of what the war might effect.
