Perhaps, if Coningsby had been resident in England, these realities of the situation would have been immediately apparent.  Residing in America, the real outlines of the struggle were a little dimmed by distance.  Nevertheless, from the very first he saw clearly where his duty lay.  He could not enlist immediately.  He was bound in honour to fulfil various literary obligations.  His latest book, Slaves of Freedom, was in process of being adapted for serial use, and its publication would follow.  He set the completion of this work as the period when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restraint toward the appointed hour.  If he had regrets for a career broken at the very point where it had reached success and was assured of more than competence, he never expressed them.  His one regret was the effect of his enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections which had been deepened and made more tender by the sense of common exile.  At last the hour came when he was free to follow the imperative call of patriotic duty.  He went to Ottawa, saw Sir Sam Hughes, and was offered a commission in the Canadian Field Artillery on the completion of his training at the Royal Military College, at Kingston, Ontario.  The last weeks of his training were passed at the military camp of Petewawa on the Ottawa River.  There his family was able to meet him in the July of 1916.  While we were with him he was selected, with twenty-four other officers, for immediate service in France; and at the same time his two younger brothers enlisted in the Naval Patrol, then being recruited in Canada by Commander Armstrong.

The letters in this volume commence with his departure from Ottawa.  Week by week they have come, with occasional interruptions; mud stained epistles, written in pencil, in dug-outs by the light of a single candle, in the brief moments snatched from hard and perilous duties.  They give no hint of where he was on the far-flung battle-line.  We know now that he was at Albert, at Thiepval, at Courcelette, and at the taking of the Regina trench, where, unknown to him, one of his cousins fell in the heroic charge of the Canadian infantry.  His constant thoughtfulness for those who were left at home is manifest in all he writes.  It has been expressed also in other ways, dear and precious to remember:  in flowers delivered by his order from the battlefield each Sabbath morning at our house in Newark, in cables of birthday congratulations, which arrived on the exact date.  Nothing has been forgotten that could alleviate the loneliness of our separation, or stimulate our courage, or make us conscious of the unbroken bond of love.