"Real war is the final limit of damnable brutality, and that's all there is in it. It 's about the silliest, filthiest, most inhumanly fatuous thing that ever happened... if God does not suffer agony because of war, and if He does not will that men should live at peace, then I cannot and will not worship Him."

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, often known as 'Woodbine Willie' because of his practice of distributing Woodbine cigarettes together with New Testaments to the troops, was undoubtedly the most famous World War One chaplain.
Stark, moving but with glimmers of humour amongst the wreckage, "The Hardest Part" asks perhaps the hardest question of all when faced with the horrors of the 1st World War - where was God to be found in the carnage of the western front? Kennedy's answer, that through the cross God shares in human suffering rather than being a 'passionate potentate' looking down unmoved by death, injury and destruction on an immense scale, was, and still is, revolutionary.
Marking the centenary both of the end of the First World War and the original publication of The Hardest Part, this new critical edition contains a contextual introduction, a brief biography of Studdert Kennedy, annotated bibliography and the full text of the first edition of the book, with explanatory notes.