AT THE NETHERMOST PIERS OF HISTORY: World War I, A View from the Ranks, For Jules Deschamps
In the foreword to this arresting volume, published fifty year ago, Sir Herbert Read writes that for the combatants in the Great War “A future, from 1916 onward, did not exist for us. We learned how to live from day to day, from hour to hour, believing that the only future was death, a future to which we were indifferent.” In his contribution, while acknowledging “the abomination of the slaughter” and the absence of "any rational justification of the war,” Wilder seeks to identify the grounds for a larger meaning to the war and his country’s participation in it.