Cardinal Mercier's Own Story

1920. With a Prefatory letter by His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons. From the Foreword: During the war, and more frequently after the armistice, I was asked would I write a narrative of my war experiences. I had taken many notes of events as they had occurred, and my memory was full of incidents in which I was concerned. Much as I would have wished to write such a story, from some points of view, if only to vindicate my country against its detractors, the libels circulated by its enemies, yet I felt, more and more inevitably as the weeks rolled by, that I would never have time to write this book. I then thought of my correspondence with the German authorities right through the war. Here are my war experiences in their most tense and vivid reality; all the issues I fought with the occupying power, their methods and mine clearly defined, undeniably fixed in black and white.