2110-3-3-15

NORTHGATE HOUSE, BISHOP'S STORTFORD, HERTS.

No.4 (832) Coy. A.S.C. Chelmsford

19-11-17

Dear Colonel Buchan

This is just to thank you for the last volume of your wonderful History. As always, when it arrives, I was impatient for the moment when I would sit down to it and - as always - I read it greedily and with the most profound admiration. From the first volume to this its eighteenth it is among the grandest intellectual achievements this war has produced. The narrative of events apart, wonderfully precise and accurate when the limitations imposed on you are

considered, your analyses of the statecraft and the war-psychology of the belligerent peoples are a revelation in this world-wide welter of confused talk. If there is another man who can comprehend these vast surgings of a world in turmoil with such a cool, all-embracing vision and acuity of judgment, he has not - so far as I am aware - shown himself. You stand alone. I pin my hopes to your one day standing as the statesman of the British Empire in the critical times that are to come.

But these poor praises are impertinent in one whose chief title to pride is that he has always been your disciple and once your subordinate, and ever

sincerely yours

F. Britten Austin