“ One company was more horrified over having found a German tied to a trench parados to be killed by British shell fire as a field punishment than by the horrors of other men equally mashed and torn, or at having crawled over the moist bodies of the dead, or slept among them, or been covered with spatters of blood and flesh—for that incident struck home with a sense of brutal militarism which was the thing in their minds against which they were fighting. ”

“ It was, however, not the attacks of their infantry which made this battle so hideous for us, nor was it the hand-to-hand struggle in the trenches, man against man, where the German, possessing greater physical strength, was easily the match of the individual Frenchman. What made the battle a living hell was the work of the French artillery, enormous in strength, with huge supplies of ammunition which was spent lavishly. Life in the trenches became a perpetual nightmare and stamped as unforgettable heroes the men who went through with it without flinching. ”

“ How any man could have survived was the puzzling thing. None could if he had remained there continuously and exposed himself; but man is the most cunning of animals. With gas mask and eye-protectors ready, steel helmet on his head and his faithful spade to make himself a new hole whenever he moved, he managed the incredible in self-protection. Earth piled back of a tree-trunk would stop bullets and protect his body from shrapnel. There he lay and there a German lay opposite him, except when attacks were being made. ”

“ No known sort of earthworks were able to withstand such fire for even a short time. But German discipline, loyalty and heroism held out.
When such "drum-fire" began, a huge wall of smoke and chalk particles rose over our trenches, cutting off the men from the rest of the world. The horror of the scene was augmented by the ceaseless rumbling, thundering and crashing which filled the air, and which, even miles away, sounded like a heavy thunderstorm. ”

“ The fusillade became more and more intense, reaching a paroxysm. The mitrailleuses mow men down and the cannons thunder in desperation. Bodies are crushed and torn to fragments by the shells, and the wounded groan as they await death, for all hope of escaping alive from such a hell has fled.
The air is saturated with the smell of powder and blood, everywhere the din is deafening; men are torn with impatience at having to remain without moving under such a fire. We struggle even for breath and cries resound from every side. ”

“ One looked in the trenches upon little mounds and crosses, marking the resting-places of men who had been hurriedly, but reverently, buried. There they are side by side with their living comrades, who are doing their work whilst their brothers sleep. Dotted all about the country are little cemeteries, which tell of devotion unto death, and which remind one of all the sorrow this war has caused. It is strange to see how religious emblems appear to have been strong against shell. ”

“ He must not reveal his position before his opportunity came. All around where this Briton had held the fort there were shell-craters like the dots of close shooting around a bull's-eye; no tell-tale blood spots this time, but a pile of two or three hundred cartridge cases lying where they had fallen as they were emptied of their cones of lead. Luck was with the occupant, but not with another man playing the same game not far away. Broken bits of gun and fragments of cloth mixed with earth explained the fate of a German machine gunner who had emplaced his piece in the same manner. ”

“ Having found the range, the Germans fairly pounded the Glenholme with bursting shell, battering her deck-houses and funnel into masses of twisted steel.
Groome and his crew did their duty well. They were game, quite game, to the finish. The captain, alert and watchful, stood beside the helmsman and directed the steering in such a manner as to keep the hostile craft dead astern. Presently a flying splinter of shell gashed his leg below the knee, and blood trickled into his boot as he bound up the wound. ”

“ In 1885 I was again sent on the rights of a settler beyond the Baikal, in the dead city of Selenginsk, where I spent eight of the most sad years of my life. The naked steppe, the nailed-up cabins and the tireless trailing of the police became my lot. I was given neither the rights of a peasant nor a passport for travel in Siberia. And the heart burned with a passionate desire to escape, to renew the struggle with the enraged foe and take revenge for the innocently destroyed powers for good—the daughters and sons of our motherland. ”

“ Madame was so charming—the name of Planet was so well known—that the bag remained at the station, unopened, and the clever French-American mother hurried off in search of her supposed friends.
She found them down along the railroad. A little squad of uniformed men unloading automobile trucks.
"Vive la France!" she cried. "Vive la France!" and all the while her brown eyes were gazing hungrily, eagerly into the equally brown orbs of her son. It would not do to single him out from the others. To do so might result in difficulties for him and for her. ”

“ It seemed impossible that any living creature should survive such a hellish turmoil. When the firing ceased abruptly, or when its direction was changed to give the French infantry a chance to attack us, then our brave fusiliers, musketeers, grenadiers crawled out of the funnels and pockets into which the enemy's grenades had ploughed the earth, made their way from among broken foundations, crumbling cement, trickling sand bags, and, grabbing their guns and wiping the dirt from their eyes, they repulsed the French attack. ”

“ IV—CHRISTMAS IN AN AUSTRIAN HOSPITAL
Christmas Eve: peace on earth and good will toward men. And all through "the still night, the holy night," the sound that means killing goes on almost continuously. How can any one say prayers for a world which is at war, or for himself that is a part of it? May God, who knows everything, help each of us to bear our part and not disgrace Him, and make us instruments to the end that He wishes. ”

“ It is a characteristic of the Cossacks, many times admitted even by German military critics, and those who have been describing the operations in Lithuania for the enemy Press, that they rarely if ever waste a shot. Unlike the French cavalry, they do not fire from a distance, but fearlessly swoop down upon their adversaries and seek to bring them down, one by one, at a range of but a few yards. And that was the fate of the Uhlans, who, hungering to feast their eyes and ears on the suffering of a defenceless woman, lingered a little too long around the burning cottage of Stephania Ychas. ”

“ They are the only two things truly great, fine and perfect, everything else is but petty and mean. I have known love for the last few weeks in all its beauty and now I want to make war, ... but fine war, a war of bayonet charges, the desperate pursuit of an enemy in flight, the entry as conqueror, with trumpets sounding, into a town that we have delivered! ”

“ South of the river the ground rises gently until it reaches the wooded heights in the neighbourhood of Beaumont, Thuillies, Nalinnes, and Somzée. I was stationed at the first of these places—a little village on high ground, with a commanding view of the green countryside. Who would have thought, but for the deafening roar of cannon, the incessant rattle of the machine-guns, the occasional whir of an aeroplane overhead, and the puffs and rings of white smoke high in air, that we were looking on a battlefield? ”

“ Paul Planet's regiment was at the front. He had learned what it means to look death in the face, to live in the trenches, to see the horrors and devastation of war. He had fought and fought bravely, and experienced no regrets save one—that he must be separated from his mother.
"We have always been more like chums than mother and son," he confided to his comrades. ”

“ The hatred of the British was a strengthening factor in the defense. Should they, the Prussians, be beaten by New Army men? No! Die first! said Prussian officers. The German staff might be as good as ever, but among the mixed troops—the old and the young, the hollow-chested and the square-shouldered, mouth-breathers with spectacles and bent fathers of families, vigorous boys in their late 'teens with the down still on their cheeks and hardened veterans survivors of many battles east and west—they were reverting appreciably to natural human tendencies despite the iron discipline. ”

“ A sail in unfrequented latitudes never seemed more truly a godsend to castaways at sea than this marvellous horse to the exhausted airman. It was but a stray animal belonging to some mounted unit which had drawn the peg of its head-rope and escaped from the horse-lines into the open desert, but to the incredulous eyes which suddenly perceived its presence it might well have been the famous magic steed of the Arabian Nights. ”

“ Prussians and Bavarians, Saxons and Hessians, men from the North and the South, from East and West, stood side by side, cheek by jowl, forming an impregnable wall against which the furious, despairing, fanatic attacks of the French were doomed to futilely spend themselves.
The French fought with marvellous valour, with reckless courage and nerve, climbing up and on over the bodies of their fallen comrades. They were excellent fighters, were these Frenchmen. But our men were better fighters, as the outcome of the battle taught us. ”

“ Sweat streaks mapped the faces of the men who came out of the trenches. Stifling clouds of dust hung over the roads, with the trucks phantom-like as they emerged from the gritty mist and their drivers' eyes peered out of masks of gray which clung to their faces. A fall of rain comes as a blessing to Briton and German alike. German prisoners worn with exhaustion had complexions the tint of their uniforms. If the British seemed weary sometimes, one had only to see the prisoners to realize that the defensive was suffering more than the offensive. ”

“ Not only because the war in the Champagne was the greatest and longest defensive battle in the history of the world and resulted in a magnificent victory for ourselves; not only out of gratitude for our heroic leaders and soldiers who accomplished the superhuman, endured the unspeakable, and yet, undaunted, fought on to victory; there is another deeper, more salient reason why we must not forget. I refer to our hero dead, who, with incomparable self-abnegation, gave their lives for king and country, for Emperor and empire, for home and nation. ”

“ It must not be assumed that they have merely gone to the base hospitals to attend to the wounded soldiers brought to them from the front and carried to them through the dangerous area. Some at least have gone right to the trenches into the midst of the inferno of bullets and shells and poisonous gases, where the air is filled with the groans of the dying and the stench of the unburied dead and where the very soil trembles from the force of the new and devilish explosives that reduce humanity to a pulp. ”

“ Why should we be downhearted? Why, indeed, when it does no good. Not "Merrie England!" War is not a merry business; but an Englishman may be cheerful for the sake of self and comrades.
Of course, these battalions, officers and men, would talk about when the war would be over. Even the Esquimaux must have an opinion on the subject by this time. That of the men who make the war, whose lives are the lives risked, was worth more, perhaps, than that of people living thousands of miles away; for it is they who are doing the fighting, who will stop fighting. ”

“ We looked at the roof of the blazing house, and, in truth, there was a woman's figure in white, with a red cross on her breast. The doctor shouted: "Eh, fellows, it is true! A woman was left in the house—a nurse—his wife!"
"What can be done?" asked the stunned soldiers. "The whole house is on fire, and she is not strong enough to break through the window frame. She must be weak from fright. ”

“ At Ypres and Saint Georges it charged the troops of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria and the Duke of Würtemberg in succession. Dixmude was but one panel of the triptych: on the broken apex of the black capital of the Communiers, on the livid backgrounds of the flat country about Nieuport, twice again did the brigade inscribe its stormy silhouette.
But at Ypres and Saint Georges the sailors had the bulk of the Anglo-French forces behind them; at Dixmude up to November 4 they knew that their enterprise was a forlorn hope. And in their hands they held the fate of the two Flanders. ”

“ Beyond an occasional ping against a sandbag, you have heard nothing to note the existence of rifle fire, except that the men you have passed have got these weapons to hand. You tell the men at the advanced posts how proud their country is of them, how thankful you are to have seen them, how you pray that God may bring them back safe to their homes; you get rid of all cigars or cigarettes you may have upon you, wishing that you had thousands more, and then you return home, varying perhaps the route through the communication trenches. ”

“ In a few minutes this hardly-earned happiness was shattered. The Boches seized everything—the few cows, the dearly-loved horse. They set fire to the farm, shot the farmer, and drove before them, into the distance, the poor widow with her four weeping and terrified children. What a sinister picture it makes! It was at the close of a splendid August day. The little isolated farm is burning. A few yards from the door the dead man is lying on his back. On the side of the hill which descends to the main road are the silhouettes of the Uhlans disappearing in the gathering darkness of night. ”

“ We had on board a battalion and some detachments of the Third Colonial Regiment of Infantry. At the moment of the explosion I was on the bridge, with the commander of the ship, his second in command, and several of the higher officers. We directed the steps to be taken, distributing lifebelts, superintending the launching of boats and liferafts. Not an outcry, not a complaint, not the slightest sign of panic—only the dignified tranquillity of men who long ago had consecrated their lives to the sublime cause that had put arms in their hands. ”

“ Where is he?"
"In heaven, if there is such a place for heroes." The doctor then told them all. The German officer and his wife both cried.
"But how was it that your guns were firing at a farm which you were occupying?" asked the prisoner.
"Our guns?" exclaimed the doctor, who was already bandaging a new victim. "It was your guns that were shelling a house over which flew a German Red Cross flag. Our soldiers were saving the lives of your wounded, and your guns were firing at both ours and yours. They killed the man who saved you. That's the way the Kaiser makes war." ”