Used good without jacket.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
I am told that it is necessary to-day to offer an apology for any
book that has as its background the most recent war. This I
do.
What was it that impelled Odette, an elegant and vivacious
young Frenchwoman, to undertake one of the most dangerous
jobs created by modern war? It was neither boredom nor a form
of escape. It was not only a zest for adventure-though
Belloc's "boly hunger" surely played its part. It was not crude
hatred of the German people but a detestation of the Nazi
system and of the mechanized leviathan of the police state.
Odette saw more clearly than did most people that the greatest
Wrong ever done to Germany was unwittingly achieved by
Bismarck who intended to unify. "He left behind a nation,"
wrote Max Weber, "without any political will, accustomed to
allow the great statesman at its head to look after its policy
for it." This vacuum provided Hitler's opportunity and
Europe's tragedy.
Odette went to the war for three main reasons. She was a
Picarde and the place for the men-and the womenof Picardy
has always becn in the vanguard of the battle. Duty, thercfore,
came first. The second reason was more obscure. It was an
inarticulate and unrealized revolt against general sloth and
indifference to the fact that a great-if politically immature
nation had openly accepted evil as its good. The third reason
lay in her profound love of England and of France and in her
passionate belief that in their joint survival lay the bright hope
of freedom and civilization.
In comparison with the work of some of her comrades,
Odette's part in the field was necessarily slight. She was
captured after six months, at a moment when the last labyrinth
she had helped to create was beginning to surge into activity.
The "Raoul-Lise" circuit was only one of nearly fifty secret
organizations directed from Baker Street and run by British
agents in Occupied France. It was rarely possible to make a
complete parcel of an operation, so to speak, and to tie up its….