“ Now, when the wind had actually risen and the Edinburgh could at last escape from the broiling heat and the inexpressible dullness of endless waiting, the Moewe appeared and shattered all her hopes!
We pitied the poor old captain, who was sixty-seven years old; but war is war! He and his crew had to take up their quarters with us, and their ship had to bid a hasty adieu to this world. The cattle will wait for their food in vain. ”

“ How clearly the thought suddenly flashes on you that that man is your enemy, that he is seeking to take your life, that he bites, strikes, and scratches, tries to force you down and plant his dagger in your heart. Again you use your dagger. Thank heavens! He is down. Saved!— Still, you must have that dagger back! You pull it out of his chest. A jet of warm blood rushes out of the gaping wound and strikes your face. Human blood, warm human blood! You shake yourself, horror strikes you for only a few seconds. ”

“ Now he was a simple soldier, and for nine months he had not seen Paris or his home or his pretty wife. The baby's eyes were gray-blue, it seemed, but he had not been able to test the truth of that description.
"As a rule," he said, "one doesn't think back to one's old life. A great gulf lies between us and the past and it is as though one had been born again just to be a soldier in this war. The roots of our former existence have been torn up. All one's old interests have been buried. ”

“ In the distance I heard the roar of the big guns. As their noise grew louder the strumming of the machine guns mingled with it and their staccato was always distinguishable even amid the ear crushing thunder of the high explosives. Then came the rat-a-pat of rifle fire, foolishly insignificant in point of noise compared to the cannon, but cruelly deadly, as any one who has seen war knows.
Artillery is terrifying, but after all it is cold steel in the hand-to-hand, bestial fighting that slays. ”

“ All at once in this antechamber of death there rises a song! To the steel heart of the Monge the even more highly tempered hearts of the French sailors are replying. They are singing! If the plates are springing, these hearts do not give way. Like their ancestors, the ancient Gauls, they fear nothing; and they prove it by intoning a hymn for France at 200 feet below the surface of the ocean. ”

“ Our young soldiers who went away in them had acquired an entirely new way of shouting "Vive la France." It was no longer as if they were on parade, notwithstanding all the flowers that people tossed to them: it was already the cry of men who were to lead in war's assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of their lives. I remember one little infantryman of twenty years, standing erect with folded arms in the back of his compartment, his eyes flashing, and all the muscles of his pale face taut. He kept repeating threateningly, "Vive la France—vive la France," without a look toward any one ”

“ They do not talk from bed to bed, as some of the more loquacious do. Directly opposite is one of those fragile bits of humanity that the violent wind of war has blown, like an unresisting leaf, into the vortex. Monsieur Gilet is a humble little school teacher from some humble little village school in a once peaceful commune, where in another little village school his humble little wife teaches school as he does. He is so light and so frail that I can lift him myself with ease. He has a shrapnel wound in his side and they have not found the ball. ”

“ The Boches feel that we have no business in the war.
The trench was so narrow I could not use my bayonet, so I used the knife. I do not know how long we had been fighting, but the Boches cleared out. We tried to get our squads together and prepare for what we knew would be coming. The enemy simply had retired to their second-line trenches to let their artillery turn upon us in their first-line shelter. All morning they hammered us, but we hung on, lying flat upon our bellies and clinging to our mother, the earth, as if she would protect us. Showers of dirt almost buried us alive. ”

“ Some of the letters from French soldiers, scrawled in the squalor of the trenches by men caked in filth and mud, are human documents in which they reveal themselves with extraordinary intimacy, and in which they put the whole truth, not disguising their terror or their blood-lust in the savage madness of a bayonet charge, or the heartache which comes to them when they think of the woman they love, or the queer little emotions and sentiments which come to them in the grim business of war.... ”

“ For hours and days and weeks the doleful procession passed along the streets; a living stream made up of all ranks and classes of society. Here were seen the poor old farmer's household, whose sons had gone to the front; and young married women, with small children in their arms or by their sides, whose husbands had to don the soldier's uniform and go to the war. The sick, the old and the feeble were taken from their beds of suffering and, with shawls or blankets thrown over their shoulders, placed in carts or wagons and carried away, perhaps, to perish by the roadside. ”

“ We have now been brought to the south of Ypres and continue this depressing life in advanced trenches. Not a quarter of an hour's respite; shells, shrapnels, bombs and bullets fall around us continuously. How courage has changed with this modern war! The hero of olden times was of a special type, who put on a fine poise and played up to the gallery because he fought before admiring spectators. Now, apart from our night attacks, always murderous, in which courage is not to be seen, because one can hardly discern one's neighbour in the darkness, our valour consists in a perfect stoicism. ”

“ And he told me how on the night he had his own wound French and German soldiers not yet dead talked together by the light of the moon, which shed its pale light upon all those prostrate men, making their faces look very white. He heard the murmurs of voices about him, and the groans of the dying, rising to hideous anguish as men were tortured by ghastly wounds and broken limbs. In that night enmity was forgotten by those who had fought like beasts and now lay together. A French soldier gave his water-bottle to a German officer who was crying out with thirst. ”

“ Every man in khaki, and every man that has a soldier boy to love, should salute that symbol which speaks of love amid the hate and turmoil of war. For it means womanhood consecrated to gentle service, reckoning neither wage nor worry in aught it does, and it takes the sting from broken manhood that has ventured for [332] the sake of honour and of duty, through comradeship in suffering, to the verge of life, and beyond it. ”

“ Every Sunday, divine service is celebrated on board—a serious, simple ceremony. Around the movable altar, flags stretched make stained-glass windows of bunting; the vault of the church is formed by the low whitewashed ceiling of the space between decks; to right and left, the partitions of the cabins, the white stems of the smokestacks, form the metal walls of the shrine; the parti-coloured tubes, steam pipes, well-polished cocks, cast red and yellow reflections; chairs for the officers, benches for the crew, are grouped to a depth of eight or ten yards. He comes who so desires. ”

“ The news of Rockwell's death was telephoned to the escadrille. The captain, lieutenant, and a couple of men jumped in a staff car and hastened to where he had fallen. On their return the American pilots were convened in a room of the hotel and the news broken to them. With tears in his eyes the captain said: "The best and bravest of us all is no more."
No greater blow could have befallen the escadrille. Kiffin was its soul. He was loved and looked up to by not only every man in our flying corps but by every one who knew him. ”

“ Beneath the canvas of a huge hangar mechanicians are at work on the motor of an airplane. Outside, on the borders of an aviation field, others loiter awaiting their aërial charge's return from the sky. Near the hangar stands a hut-shaped tent. In front of it several short-winged biplanes are lined up; inside it three or four young men are lolling in wicker chairs.
They wear the uniform of French army aviators. These uniforms, and the grim-looking machine guns mounted on the upper planes of the little aircraft, are the only warlike note in a pleasantly peaceful scene. The war seems very remote. ”

“ It is true that the hardest, most cruel burdens of war fell upon the women and the children who are left widows and orphans or who suffer while the men are at the front. It has always been so, but as in every patriotic nation the women are suffering and doing their share as bravely as the men. The soldiers are glad and proud to die for their country, and their women folk and children are proud to have them, despite the sorrow and privation. ”

“ High up in the sky, slipping and gliding among the transparent clouds, a war plane swoops over the French warships, passes along them, and drops bombs that only our skillful dodging makes harmless; they burst opposite our ships. On the surface of the water one of the cruisers perceives the furrow of a periscope! ”

“ But underneath the great tenors of wireless telegraphy whisper the myriads of baritones, basses, members of the chorus. Thus in the tropical forest the roaring of lions by no means hinders the dialogues of insects and rodents; this network of lower voices gives the jungle its deep life. The slender tones of talking ships fill the atmosphere of the sea with a mysterious animation. A big liner, come from tropical seas, announces her passage of such and such a frequented cape. A torpedo-boat patrolling toward Gibraltar tells Port Said about the ships which it has sighted. ”

“ IX—STORY OF THE FRENCH DRAGOONS
A young Russian officer in the French dragoons told me that he had been fighting since the beginning of the war with never more than three hours' sleep a night and often no sleep at all. On many nights those brief hours of rest were in beetroot fields in which the German shrapnel had been searching for victims, and he awakened now and then to listen to the well-known sound of that singing death before dozing off again.
It was "Boot and saddle" at four o'clock in the morning, before the dawn. It was cold then—a cold which made men tremble as with an ague. ”

“ He tells of the human and psychological side of warfare as he has seen it on the battle field under heavy shell fire, in bombarded towns, in field hospitals and amid great movements of troops. He reveals the throbbing heart of the ghastly brute force that mangles the body and tortures the mind of heroic men. The author says in his conclusion: "More passionate than any other emotion that has stirred man through life is my conviction that any man that has seen these things, if he has ... any human pity, should dedicate his head and heart to the sacred duty of preventing another war like this." ”

“ For us the battle passes in silence, the noise of one's motor deadening all other sounds. In the green patches behind the brown belt myriads of tiny flashes tell where the guns are hidden; and those flashes, and the smoke of bursting shells, are all we see of the fighting. It is a weird combination of stillness and havoc, the Verdun conflict viewed from the sky.
Far below us, the observation and range-finding planes circle over the trenches like gliding gulls. At a feeble altitude they follow the attacking infantrymen and flash back wireless reports of the engagement. ”

“ Getting started is the hardest part of an attack. Once you have begun diving you're all right. The pilot just ahead turns tail up like a trout dropping back to water, and swoops down in irregular curves and circles. You follow at an angle so steep your feet seem to be holding you back in your seat. Now the black Maltese crosses on the German's wings stand out clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. ”

“ Tiny, clever, good-hearted, brave Rittmeister Farkas, mathematician, marksman, bridge builder, locomotive driver in one person, doctor, chaplain, letter writer and brilliant commandant of lonely, middle-aged soldiers, daring Herr Oberst-Rittmeister Farkas—a little red hussar's cap which becomes smaller and smaller in the dust of the road—you give me so many things to think about that at night I can hardly go to sleep. ”

“ Ireland announces a simple movement of Russian strategy, but Norddeich—the German post—clamors to all the echoes of a German victory, an advance, the capture of thousands of prisoners. Norddeich laconically explains some event at sea, but Eiffel sets his biggest sparks cracking, announcing to Moscow, to Newfoundland, to the Sudan and the Red Sea the disaster at sea that has befallen some Teutonic force. In how many days, with how many changes, will the public read these bits of news? At every hour of the day and night we receive them brutal and imperious. ”

“ Before leaving, he had put two bags of oranges in his machine to take to Balsley, who liked to suck them to relieve his terrible thirst, after the day's flying was over. There was an aërial struggle against odds, far within the German lines, and Chapman, to divert their fire from his comrades, engaged several enemy airmen at once. He sent one tumbling to earth, and had forced the others off when two more swooped down upon him. Such a fight is a matter of seconds, and one cannot clearly see what passes. Lufbery and Prince, whom Chapman had defended so gallantly, regained the French lines. ”

“ In this way I became acquainted with the Mèchins, French peasants of the old order, unalterably attached to the soil. They hope, nay, they are sure, that their son is going to get well. The sick man says nothing. They're all like that, our soldiers—no foolish tenderness, no pain given to their parents. Who knows, besides, how much their desire to live may have dwindled down after their tragic voyages to the frontier? The soul must possess new powers of detachment when it has risen to the heights of absolute self-sacrifice. ”

“ They have come back, not with their courage drained, broken down, horror-stricken, stunned—not at all. They forget themselves to talk smilingly of the great hope in which we all share. They are touched, deeply touched, by the few hours of fatigue we undergo for them each day—for them who have given almost their lives.
My tasks were laid out for me, and I began work at once, thanked by the soldiers almost in advance for my trouble. ”

“ Paris, Aug., 1915.
Dearest Anne,
Wandering about alone, as I have been doing a great deal lately, I have gone into many of the churches and prayed at the different shrines, and it is impressive to see the character of those who come in to pray. Men who can never kneel again; men who sit with bandaged eyes before the lighted altars, for whom all the visions of the world have been blotted out for ever; the poor women in their little shawls; women in their crape veils; the man going to the Front; the man who has come back from it, never to take an active part in life again ”

“ No novelist's imagination could create so fine an utterance. One was scribbled in the trenches, the other in the hospital ward, to those who had the best claim on the best the writers had to give. Said one:
"I am in the trenches, and in half an hour we go over the top. Our artillery is going at it hammer and tongs, the biggest bombardment in English history. It is just like huge express trains rushing through the air in hundreds. All of us are happy in the prospect of a clean fight after so many weary months as passive spectators of anything but warfare, except on rare occasions. ”

“ The powerful antennae of the Eiffel Tower, of Ireland, of Germany, of Italy, or of Constantinople dominate with their noisy throats the feeble whispers. With their full force, to any distance, they launch the official news of the great ordeal. If some one talks too loudly, 500 or 1,000 kilometers away, (300 to 600 miles,) they raise their tones, throw more strength into their voices, until the interrupters become silent.
A tacit agreement alternates their messages. The German does not obstruct the Frenchman, the Turk waits until Malta has finished. ”

“ In Lorraine the tide of war ebbed and flowed over [74] the same tracts of ground, and neither side picked up its dead or its wounded. Men lay there alive for days and nights, bleeding slowly to death. The hot sun glared down upon them and made them mad with thirst. Some of them lay there for as long as three weeks, still alive, with gangrened limbs in which lice crawled, so that they stank abominably.
"I cannot tell you all the things I saw," said one of the young soldiers who talked to me on his way back from Lorraine. ”

“ Man against man! That "man against man!" is the most terrible thing I have experienced in war. Nobody can tell afterwards how many he has killed. You have gripped your opponent, who is sometimes weaker, sometimes [59] stronger than yourself. In the light of the burning houses you observe that the white of his eyes has turned red; his mouth is covered with a thick froth. With head uncovered, with disheveled hair, the uniform unbuttoned and mostly ragged, you stab, hew, scratch, bite and strike about you like a wild animal. It means life or death. You fight for your life. ”

“ The agony felt by the pilot and passenger seems to transmit itself to you. You are helpless to avert the certain death. You cannot even turn your eyes away at the moment of impact. In the dull, grinding crash there is the sound of breaking bones....
In spite of their bombardment of open towns and the use of explosive bullets in their aërial machine guns, the Boches have shown up in a better light in aviation than in any other arm. ”

“ German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the German's tail.
The rattle of the gun that is aimed at you leaves you undisturbed. Only when the bullets pierce the wings a few feet off do you become uncomfortable. You see the gunner crouched down behind his weapon, but you aim at where the pilot ought to be—there are two men aboard the German craft—and press on the release hard. Your mitrailleuse hammers out a stream of bullets as you pass over and dive, nose down, to get out of range. ”