Now It Can Be Told

Starts out slow, but then really gets into the gruesome detail of trench warfare. It's hard to imagine what these soldiers went through. Then it goes into what the boys came into when they finally returned home. WWI was in many ways one of the worst wars ever.

This reading taught me a viewpoint about war that I think true about present conflict, politics, the military industrial complex, societal defects, death, etc... So true then as it is today. I was surprised he predicted WWII in 1919.

I recommend this book for anyone who can read. I knew very little about WW1 other than vague impressions about "trenches" etc. This book prompted me to read other books on the subject. It is very hard to put down, and it will change you forever once you read it. I think it should be mandatory reading for students.

A reporter tells of his World War I experiences. Lots and lots of railing against the war. Written well after the war. Some interesting insights about what the war was like but go find something written by a veteran.

I agree with the other the store reader reviews of this book, and I am delighted to find the book has been recently republished. I ran across Phillip Gibbs while I was reading the Paul Fussell book about WW1, "The Great War and Modern Memory". Fussell quoted Gibbs a number of times throughout "The Great War" as Gibbs was one of the many writers on the scene, along with the better known WW1 poets/memoirists/novelists that Fussell concentrates on. But Gibbs was the one who stayed with me and who I wanted to read more of.

Gibbs is a journalist. He writes like a journalist, not a poet. He has a good eye and ear for a story, and he writes well, in the engaging style of any modern journalist. He also writes his own personal story, what it was like to be a war correspondent in this particular war. The problems of getting the story out. Unlike the front line troops, his engagements were not with "the enemy" but rather with the British high command and the wartime censors. And Gibbs makes clear, as does Fussey in his WW1 book, that "wartime censorship" was pretty closely allied with pro-war propaganda. The combat troops saw through the imperial propaganda line easily enough, but the civilian populations at home still subscribed, and no one except the front line combat troops really knew the reality of the war and the conditions under which the war was being fought. In this matter the German troops were in the same predicament as the Allies.

Below I have lifted a sentence from the short introduction to the book, which was written in 1920. The reference to "some new system of relationship between one people and another" -- surely a prophetic vision of the United Nations. It came too late to prevent the second great war, but at least we have it now. And for all of the manipulation and shortcomings and disappointments around the UN, since its' inception we have not seen matched national armies fight it out again to the bitter end.

"The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war and of all war--not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather as the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out of their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however painful, to add something to the world's knowledge out of which men of good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one people and another, some new code of international morality, preventing or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years' sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness."
Phillip Gibbs

An absolutely wonderful, detailed account of a war correspondent's experiences during the Great War. Much too detailed for the casual reader, but truly thorough for those familiar with the geography or with the war itself. But the real strength of Gibbs account is his prophecy of the future horrors resulting from the vindictive nature of the Versailles Treaty and other treatment of the defeated nations. Written in 1919, Gibbs predicts another German war in 20 years in which the former Allied Nations will not be prepared (Dead on!) and he also hints at the economic depression of the 1930's.

This book should be required reading for all high school seniors. A course should be taught on the follies and horrors of war, with this book at the core. A course that teaches that all men are brothers in the end. Gibbs has done an amazing job here of describing World War I. Everything, from the mud and slime, bits of decomposed bodies, stupidity of G.H.Q. and those who ran the war, misguided patriotism, to the questioning of the Christianity of both sides, that could lead to such butchering of young men. 900,000 in England alone! And only 20 years later . . . . Giibbs knew it would happen. How?

Gibbs was an official British war reporter on the Western Front, and several volumes of his dispatches were published during the course of the war. THIS volume, which I originally came across in a used book store in Christchurch, New Zealand, was published after the war. In it Gibbs, who was knighted for his reporting, speaks free of the censors and his real concerns about morale and "national security". The writing fuses his admiration and support of the troops with what he actually saw and felt. It's a stunning introduction to how the struggle, especially on the Somme and in the Ypres Salient, was viewed during and just after the war.

Written during/after WW1, by today's standards, BORING and full of British period speak. Too much minutia, has the typical understating, mystical statements common at the time is was composed. Some statements/stories lack the action/excitement of the moment described and other leave you wondering what the author meant. This book reads like old money telling war stories in a British Gentleman's club.