"He did not write the play with the commercial management in mind. He did not write it with a view to peace propaganda; nor did he write for any glorification of war. He wrote it to satisfy himself alone. He wanted to place on record a simple story of war before the memory died. He did not write it with the possibility of an audience in mind, and when one wrote in that way it was easy to tell the truth as one saw it with one's own eyes. One well-known gentleman said it was false; another described it as crude to the last detail; while another writer in a Scandinavian paper said it was the best play Sheridan had written since the War. (Laughter.) He felt that some of his critics had looked from an angle instead of straight from the front. He sincerely resented any statement that it was a disparagement to the soldier to say that the War broke men's nerve. It was the fighting man he had striven to reverence and remember."