Eric Fisher Wood

“ The British all agree that the German troops have an unflinching, dogged, brutal courage, which nothing seems to daunt. They come on and on, climbing over the bodies of the regiments which have gone before. The German tactics are those of Napoleon. They attack a position and they keep on attacking it until they take it, no matter what it costs; regiments and brigades are wiped out without any wavering in the commander’s resolve or in the dogged persistence of his troops. ”

“ It is a long walk when one is dead tired, but there are no public conveyances at night and, indeed, few in the daytime. The walk takes nearly an hour, even at a fast gait, for at short intervals one is halted by policemen demanding explanations of this midnight journey. Few experiences have been more weird than this nightly trip through the familiar Paris streets, strangely dark and absolutely deserted.
Each day is now a haze of Germans and their troubles; of policemen, detectives, and soldiers, of tears and laughter, bits of the sublime and the ridiculous ”

“ What sights one might behold if one could, himself invisible, follow this ribbon of scarred earth as it winds its way across Europe from the North Sea to the Alps! Its length is mazed with barbed wire and electric death, and menaced by pits and mines. Heaps of dead men lie in the sun or rain, and the wounded cry faintly and more faintly until they too are dead. ”

“ The soldiers, like all German soldiers that I have seen, were fat, healthy, happy, and cheerful, singing, waving hands and handkerchiefs to the responsive crowds on the platforms, and laughing and joking. They looked for all the world like big puppies hanging out of a box filled with straw. They were young men of Germany’s best troops and had that certain bearing of confidence and efficiency which marks veterans. ”

“ There is in general such a lack of adequate service for the wounded that to work with the Ambulance Corps and thus contribute one’s mite of helpfulness is almost a duty for any American who can spare even a few weeks of time. When one has seen thousands of wounded, as I saw them at the Battle of the Marne, lying for three and four days in the rain without food, drink, or any medical aid, one is irresistibly driven to do something to diminish such terrible suffering. Many young Americans are feeling the same impulse and volunteers for ambulance service are numerous. ”

“ It is not a pleasant sight to see strong men palsied with fright, but we have seen many such these days. Not a soul remains in the British Embassy or consulate to take care of England’s manifold interests. It seems strange that when thousands of British heroes of the army are dying brave deaths on the fields of battle, not a single British hero was to be found in the diplomatic corps with nerve enough to risk the inconveniences of a siege. ”

“ Most of the casualties had been bayoneted through the neck, face, and skull, the men having lunged savagely for the face just like a boxer who has lost his temper. In the first-mentioned place I saw a Frenchman and a German lying side by side, both dead, and each transfixed by the other’s bayonet, showing that they had rushed upon each other madly without the least thought of science or defense. ”

“ One is tempted to wonder what would have happened if there had been no British army to help check the retreat toward Paris.
British soldiers agree that they have received most extraordinary hospitality from the civilians and peasantry of Belgium and France. Whole villages, themselves facing starvation, gave their last crumb of bread and their last drop of wine to the British troops and cheerfully slept in the fields in order that the soldiers might snatch a bit of rest in their houses. ”

“ The Hungarians are of Magyar descent and speak a beautiful, musical language, while the Austrians are a mixture of many races whose common tongue is a borrowed, unclassical German. Each country has its own government, its own parliament, and its own cabinet officers. The Hungarian nobility regard the Austrian nobles as mere upstarts. Nothing is so displeasing to a Hungarian as to be called an Austrian, or to be told that Austrians and Hungarians are one and the same people. ”

“ Today peace-loving France realizes that she is attacked by a powerful and ambitious enemy. Today no man in all la Patrie regrets the sacrifices which he has made to maintain an army capable of defending his country; no man but gives fervent thanks to Heaven that he has been forced to pay taxes to support that army; no man regrets those three years of his life which he and each of his fellow-countrymen offered up in order that its number might not diminish, for now that army stands READY to prevent the ruin of his property, of his nation, of his women. ”

“ As one in Germany senses efficiency, one as quickly becomes conscious of the all-seeing eye and the all-guiding hand of the Government. We have nothing like that in America, and for an American in France there is no such supervision. Life in Prussia is at present, for the diplomat of a neutral country, much like skating on thin ice. Several of the younger diplomats in Berlin have unconsciously committed acts considered indiscreet by the German Government, and so ended their usefulness in Germany. ”

“ We tried to comprehend the battle as a whole by studying a great many fields, any one of which would a few years ago have been considered an entire battle in itself. The dead were scattered far and wide; and in the fields and among the grain-stacks the wounded cried out their piteous faint appeals. Little groups of German stragglers were hiding in the forests, and squads of alert French soldiers hunted them down, beating through the cover as eager setter dogs search for grouse. In one field of about six acres lay nine hundred German dead and wounded ”

“ As for the famine conditions, I did not accept German opinion about the abundance or price of food supplies, but myself asked prices in shops and public markets and in various restaurants and hotels—all sure thermometers of any rise in the price of food.
If Germany ever pleads famine it will be for some purpose of diplomacy. In times of peace she raises each year more than she can herself consume and is an exporter of food-stuffs. This year she had a good crop, and, needless to say, it was, with characteristic efficiency, entirely harvested. ”

“ The British are the only troops in the war who shoot with any degree of excellence. Their shooting does not approach in accuracy that of our own army, but is so superior to the Germans that a British battalion of 1100 men usually has a firing effect equal to that of a German regiment of nearly 3000. On the gray-green backgrounds of Europe the British khaki is not conspicuous, but at the same time it is certainly visible. The British hat is the most conspicuous headgear in the war, since its rim casts a heavy black shadow, and its flat top shows white in sunlight. ”

“ Panic conditions of the most pronounced order exist today. Everyone seems possessed with the single idea of escaping from Paris. A million people must be madly trying to leave at the present moment. There are runs on all the banks. The streets are crowded with hurrying people whose faces wear expressions of nervous fright. The railroad stations are packed with tightly jammed mobs in which people and luggage form one inextricable, suffocating, hopeless jumble. ”

“ A mile below us in the valley we could through our field-glasses define the position of the French trenches and beyond them locate the German trenches. Between the two stretched that No Man’s Land, called “between the lines,” which runs from Ostend through Bethune, Albert, and Lassigny to Soissons and Rheims and from thence to the Swiss frontier. Following its twistings and turnings this strip of land is four hundred and fifty miles in length. It lies wrapt in uncanny solitude for in all its length there moves no living creature. ”

“ One senses at once the wonderful civic consciousness of the nation and respects it. One does not throw waste paper out of a carriage window, nor take trivial short cuts, nor walk on the grass, nor attempt to pass through ticket gates before the proper time. Everything is regulated, all is done in order.
I was momentarily embarrassed and self-conscious when first I found myself rubbing shoulders with gentlemen in spiked helmets. During the past four months I had seen them only as prisoners or dead men, and their only greetings had been by way of their shells and bombs. ”

“ A French attendant remarked as he handed a sliver of our only loaf of bread to a shattered man: “Il va mourir tout à l’heure, mais cela lui fera grand plaisir en mourant!”
The dying are frightful sights, and parts of them are often already mortified, as they lie in the straw, entirely occupied with breathing. They breathe eternally little short breaths, a hundred or a hundred and ten to the minute, like some sort of pump. They wish passionately not to die, and yet they know with desperate certainty that they are going to die. ”

“ The French are brave in a more spectacular way. They are better winners than the Germans and worse losers. Their temperament leads them to push home a success with more enthusiasm than the Germans; whereas, in defeat, they are less reliable.
The fighting qualities of the British are much higher than those of any other nation, when, as in the case of the British regulars, they have had sufficient training to teach them the technique of war. They are calm and usually cheerful under the most adverse circumstances. They do not lose control of themselves either in victory or defeat. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that there are dissensions or differences of opinion in the German nation, or that the Kaiser or the military party has imposed war on the people. In modern times [Pg 216] it would not be possible for even an absolute monarch to force an unwilling people into such a momentous step. The German Government is the product and expression of the German people. They have made it and, having created it, they are proud of their work. ”

“ The woodwork went up in smoke, the front façade was all scorched and disintegrated by the intense heat so that the surface of the stone detail is blowing off in fine dust, while the glass to the last particle was shattered by the concussions of bursting shells. The Cathedral stands like a great skeleton of its former self. Its flesh, as it were, is gone although few of its bones are broken.
Saturday, October 3d. This is the first war in modern times in which whole nations have gone to battle; in this conflict every man in a nation is a soldier. ”

“ One is impressed by the virility and vigor of the Germans as a race. Their national spirit also is wonderful, exceeded only perhaps by that of the Japanese. People who one day read the announcement of the death of a son, a father, or a brother, are seen the next day in the streets or cafés going about quietly, expressing or betraying neither [Pg 220] sorrow nor regret. The loved one has died “für Gott, für König, und für Vaterland.” That is glory enough, and neither the Emperor nor the people feel that it is appropriate to mourn for one who has died for his country. ”

“ The Champs-Elysées is probably at present the darkest avenue on earth. All those monumental lamp-posts which used to [Pg 38] stand like beacons in the midst of the stream of traffic now shine no more. The sun seldom rises without revealing the ruins of one of these lamps and of an automobile, the two having mutually destroyed each other in the darkness. We do not know why the city is left in gloom. ”

“ At eleven o’clock this morning we reached Boulogne, which is at present a British army base and almost deserves to be called an English city. It is filled with troops, with Red Cross and Royal Army Medical Corps, and with transport wagons, all British. English is heard on all sides and the London Times is by noon on sale in the streets. Bits of the front freshly arrived are much in evidence; one sees everywhere English Tommies on leave, wounded Ghurkas, and convoys of sullen German prisoners. ”

“ From the back of the ambulance a wounded man on his stretcher is slid into place as a bread pan is slid into an oven, the feet of the stretcher running on wooden rails. In starting out to collect the wounded an ambulance carries its full quota of stretchers. When a man is picked up from the field of battle one of these is taken out and he is carefully lifted on it; if he is already lying on a stretcher he is not changed but, in order to save unnecessary suffering, put into the ambulance with the one on which he is already resting,—an empty one being left behind in exchange. ”

“ It is as if we held that since we do not wish to be ill we will abolish physicians—or as if we believed that because we do not desire to have our homes burn down we will do away with the fire department and with insurance. No matter how pacific a nation may be it cannot avoid war by signing peace treaties, either singly or by the bushel. Reasonable military preparedness is the only valid insurance against disastrous and ruinous war. ”

“ The point to be made is that the main forces of artillery do not seem to fire very continuously. Oftentimes in the [Pg 319] middle of a very tense battle where heavy forces are opposed to each other there will be periods of half an hour or even longer when no firing whatsoever is to be heard. The importance of observers has become tremendous. On some occasions it seems as though the main object of an army were to get a single man into a location from which he can accurately observe the enemy’s position, and as if until this is accomplished the whole battle is at a standstill. ”

“ Preparedness and military system are not synonymous with a large standing army. A small, well-prepared army may be the nucleus around which an efficient military system can be built. The Swiss organization is at present most interesting, for it has saved that country from becoming involved in the present war. Had Belgium been as well prepared as was Switzerland, Germany would have observed sacred treaties and invaded France across the Franco-German border. ”

“ In Berlin, restaurants, cafés, theaters, and concerts are going at full blast. Donait, Iselin, and I, who have for months been working like dogs in Paris, which is as dull as a country village and where cafés close at eight and restaurants at nine and no places of amusement are open other than a few poor cinemas, are thoroughly enjoying the contrast. ”

“ The feeling which the French soldiers on the firing-line have for the Germans is very different from the bitterness one finds in the civilian population of France. We have heard more than one French soldier say in a voice tinged with admiration, “Ah, ce sont de bons soldats!” At the front and in the trenches one gets down to basic principles and realizes that “the other man” is a fellow human being and not something with horns and a forked tail. ”