PREEACE 
Tuis post-war business is inartistic, for it is seldom that 
any one does anything well for the sake of doing it well; 
and it is un-Christian, if you value Christianity, for men 
are out to hurt and not to help—can you wonder, when the 
Ten Commandments were hurled straight from the pulpit 
through good stained glass. It is all very interesting and 
uncomfortable, and it has been a great relief to wander 
back in one’s thoughts and correspondence and personal 
dealings to an age in geological time, so many hundred 
years ago, when we were artistic Christians, doing our jobs 
as well as we were able just because we wished to do them 
well, helping one another with all our strength, and (I 
speak with personal humility) living a life of co-operation, 
in the face of hardships and dangers, which has seldom 
been surpassed. 
The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of 
friendship, as it is the only lasting cement of matrimony. 
We had plenty of difficulties; we sometimes failed, we 
sometimes won; we always faced them—we had to. Con- 
sequently we have some friends who are better than all the 
wives in Mahomet’s paradise, and when I have asked for 
help in the making of this book I have never never asked _ 
in vain. Talk of ex-soldiers: give me ex-antarcticists, un- 
soured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep the 
world. 
The trouble is that they are inclined to lose their ideals 
Vill 
