2110-4-1-13

[embossed letterhead]

31, Lilybank Gardens Glasgow

May 6 1922

My dear John,

You must not imagine that my utter failure to make suggestions arises from careless or indifferent reading. I have read the whole volume very carefully and the last chapter twice. I have considered very rigorously your appraisings of Lloyd George, the fighting record of the Americans, the contributions of Foch, Haig &c to the final result, and similar matters in which your words are sure to guide general opinion, and

I cannot find any indication of impatience or of petty, or petulant, criticism. I don't believe that anything will ever be written about the war which is on a higher plane of thought and feeling than your last chapter. It is all so large-minded and generous, and your words are worthy of a great theme - I am especially glad to find the Henry Vaughan passage at the end. You are just both to halting ally and to the foe throughout the volume, and in the last chapter every reader will feel that you grasp the big things.

There is only one of the personal estimates about which I hesitate. Is it necessary to assume (p. 437) that Wilson's head was turned by the greatness of his position? He proved himself arrogant and intolerant of opposition, but is not this the manner most "prophets of vital truths" who are called upon to act as well as to speak? My suggestion is an alteration of the phrase "the dignity was to prove too high for". I see that the words do not nessarily mean that it turned his head: he was not temperamentally fitted "to attain unto it"as the Psalmist says, but most readers will read into the

words a less generous interpretation than you probably intended. Some such wording as "the position placed an undue strain upon a stiff and somewhat arrogant temperament and a powerful but intolerant mind". I prefer "intolerant" to "inelastic"; the latter word is generally used with a suspicion of contempt, I think, though the Dictionary definition does not justify the usage.

There is one other point in another connexion. I am a little puzzled by the statement on the last line of p.202 - "meanwhile the rapid retreat

of the Third Army had fatally com- promised the situation beyond the Somme". The sentence is taken from the old book. Is it the Fifth Army that you mean? You have just been describing a retreat of the Third Army but I don't quite see how it affected the area of the Fifth, and on pp. 206-207, dealing with the events of a day or two later, you say: "In the opening stage of the retreat, the Fifth Army had embarrassed the Third; it was now the turn of the Third Army to put the

left of the Fifth in jeopardy".

Forgive my stupidity if I have misunderstood, but I expected "Fifth" not "Third" in the last line of p.202.

Two misprints - independant p. 433 l. 10 squardon p. 426 l. 7 from foot of text.

It is, I am confident, a great achievement and the noble conclusion will rank with everything that you have ever written.

I hope that you will be able to give favourable consideration to an invitation from the Scottish Song Society to speak on the future of the Vernacular at a meeting on 24 Novr. following Sir George Douglas on Characteristics of Scottish Literature. It would be very jolly to have you here, and the vernacular movement requires an impetus, on the right lines, in Glasgow.

I spent a happy month at our cottage on Loch Lucy and