With the Chinks #271330

I feel that a word of apology is due to the reader for the disjointed character of this little book. When in China I joined the Chinese Labour Corps I kept a diary at first, recording fairly fully my impressions of the work from day to day. These impressions covered what progress we made in training the coolies; also I endeavoured to record the coolies' point of view, what they thought of us, their new masters, and of this their new life in the C.L.C. To begin with I had no story to tell, but once away from camp in China, embarked on what I am calling the Interminable Journey, the germ of narrative crept into my diary and I found myself spinning something of a yarn — the yarn, in fact, of our voyage from China to France. The diary, which is printed practically as I wrote it, covers the training period in China (two months) and crossing the Pacific, The narrative begins with our long stay in.