Various

“ I have always believed that the machine which has established its despotic control over the minds and the bodies of its victims and then organized and driven them to slaughter in order to extend that control over the rest of the world, would only be destroyed if the free peoples proved themselves strong and steadfast enough to defeat its attempt in arms. The events of the last few weeks must have made it plain to every thinking man that there is no longer room for compromise between the ideals for which we and our enemies stood. Democracy and autocracy have come to death grips. ”

“ Referring to the French troops in this battle, Mr. Gibbs wrote:
Today again I have been among the thousands of French soldiers. It is splendid to see them because of their fine bearing. They are men in the prime of life, not so young as some of the British and with a graver look than one sees on British faces, when they have not yet reached the zone of fire. They are men who have seen all that war means during these years of agony and hope and boredom and death. They have no illusions. ”

“ The authorities placed in power by the Russian revolution have just signed—on Feb. 9 and March 3, 1918—treaties under which they lay down their arms before the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
Yet Belgium is still the prey of the imperial armies, which oppress her, decimating her population by privations and pitiless repressions, and overwhelming her with the worst kind of moral tortures. To these violences the Belgian Nation continues to oppose forces of resistance drawn from a consciousness of right, from the beauty of her cause, from her love of liberty. ”

“ There is that in man which enables him to meet every blow of fate with unblanched face—save one. When the blow is aimed at his soul, then he shrivels. It was in her soul that this woman was smitten, as she saw the house of her God thus. And that is why there in the land of death the churches and cathedrals are all in ruins. To make the altars of Arras gaze on the clouds and the stars, and make the winds wail through the colonnades of Rheims, was deemed the surest and swiftest way of spreading terror and affright. ”

“ Beside the khaki army of the British has grown very quickly an army in blue, the cornflower blue of the French poilus. They are splendid men, hard and solid fellows, who have been war-worn and weather-worn during these three and a half years past, and look the great fighting men who have gone many times into battle and know all that war can teach them in endurance and cunning and quick attack. ”

“ The spirit of Carey's troops was wonderful. The work they did was almost super-natural. It would have been impossible with any body of men not physical giants, but the Americans and Canadians gloried in it. They crammed every hour of the day full of fighting. It was a constantly changing battle, kaleidoscopic, free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can. The Germans gained ground. Carey and his men were back at them, hungry for more punishment. At the end of the sixth day, dog-tired and battle-worn, but still full of fight, the detachment was relieved by a fresh battalion which had come up from the rear. ”

“ Since this article was written Dunkirk has faced a new peril from the blow struck in her direction by the powerful German armies around Ypres, to the southeast; but the author's vivid and sympathetic description of the daily life of the little city remains as true as in the Winter days when it was penned for Current History Magazine.
In the track of the wind stands the plucky little City of Dunkirk, still flapping the flags of courage and constancy in the face of an increasingly rabid enemy. It is the only city of France that is subjected to bombardment from land and sea and sky. ”

“ I was told by the C.O. These flying men—or boys—who have, of course, already been broken in in America, do an additional course in France, and when they leave the aviation camp I saw they are absolutely ready for air fighting at the front. This is the finishing school. The aviators go through eight distinct courses in this school. They are perfected in flying, in observation, in bombing, in machine-gun firing. On even a cloudy and windy day the air overhead buzzes with these young American fliers, all getting into the pink of condition to do their stunts at the front. ”

“ The Belgian people, after three and a half years of the most grinding oppression, have shown by the courageous defiance of enemy bayonets which brought about the collapse of the "activist" plot, that they have lost none of their sturdy resolve to be free; that the spirit which moved them to reject the German ultimatum of Aug. 2, 1914, is as strong as ever. * * *
Only one thing is worrying and humiliating in a quite special degree all Belgians in occupied territory. It is the fear lest abroad it may be imagined that there really is an "activist" movement in Belgium. ”

“ One motors through scores of villages and more, and every little old French spot swarms with American Tommies billeted in cottages and farmhouses. Many of them marched straight to their billets from their landing port, and the experience is as wonderful for them, just spirited over from the wilds of America, as it is for the villagers who welcome these almost fabulous allies. But it is the engineering, building, and machinery works the Americans are putting up which are the most astonishing. ”

“ One or the other will fasten its hold on mankind. It is a clear realization of this issue which will be our strength in the trials to come. I have no doubt that freedom will triumph. But whether it will triumph soon or late, after a final supreme effort in the next few months or a long-drawn agony, depends on the vigor and self-sacrifice with which the children of liberty, and especially those behind the lines, dedicate themselves to the struggle. There is no time for ease or delay or debate. ”

“ The Catholic Bishops of Germany and Austria will not deny these principles. If their patriotism has wrung from them concessions which must have cost their religious spirit dear, patriotism with us confirms on the contrary the law of resistance. We would be betraying the Church and the fatherland were we so cowardly as to permit without a public act of reprobation the taking away of metal to be converted by the enemy into engines of destruction, destined to carry death into the ranks of the heroes who are sacrificing themselves for us. ”

“ The restaurant of the Hôtel Chapeau Rouge was filled with French and English officers, and an excellent meal was served much as it would be in Paris. At 4:30 everything is closed. Lights are extinguished, windows and doors are sealed with their householders behind them, unless the latter are among those who seek the comparative safety of the suburbs at nightfall. For though the entire surrounding country is subject to bombardment, the town is the centre of attack. In the twilight of the unlighted streets scarce a footfall is heard. Only the occasional rumble of a heavy cannon shakes the air. ”

“ The intrigues of the "Council of Flanders" are merely a comedy intended to mask this policy. The policy rests upon a clever juggling with the question of languages. Under cover of the principle of free self-determination of peoples, it seeks to internationalize an internal problem in the hope of dislocating the Belgian nationality. Perhaps it also aims at the creation of a fictitious Government which shall furnish the German Government with the means for opening fallacious peace negotiations to deceive the world and weaken the cohesion of the Allies. ”

“ The American labor movement, in whose behalf my colleagues and myself have been authorized to speak, declare most emphatically that they will not agree to a peace conference with the enemies of civilization, irrespective of what cloak they wear, until Prussian militarism has withdrawn within its own boundaries, and then not until the Germans have, through proper representatives, proved to our satisfaction that they recognize the right of peoples and civilized nations to determine for themselves what shall be their standard. ”

“ They are not gay or boisterous in their humor, and they do not sing like the British as they march, but they seem to have been born to this war, and its life is their life, and they are professionals.
The Tricolor passes along the roads of France and Flanders, and French trumpets ring out across the flat fields below Scherpenberg, and all the spirit of the French fighting men, who have proved themselves great soldiers in this war, as for thousands of years of history, is mingled with our own battalions. Together yesterday they gave the German Army a hard knock. ”

“ As the protest of the Flemish societies puts it, "The Flemings are not a conquered nation; they have the same electoral right as the Walloons; they have all the means for safeguarding their just rights."
Belgium has always lived an intense life, yet this has never compromised its unity. Three great parties, the Catholic, the Liberal, the Socialist, struggle for preponderance, and their action extends to all parts of the country without distinction of language. Each of them supports an identical program, in Flanders as in Wallonia, regardless of whether the citizens speak Flemish or French. ”

“ Our allies having come to the conviction that they could count no longer on Russia, and that it would even be dangerous to regard her as a military asset, have employed all their forces in conformity with the new situation in order to fortify the solidarity which unites them and to augment their military and material force in proportion to what they had lost by the withdrawal of Russia, all with the idea of assuring the world a just and durable peace based on the liberty of the people to be self-determining. ”

“ What amazes one is the appalling stupidity of such a crime. If the Germans destroyed the town, that was their right, the might of the sword, and their act could perhaps be justified. But to destroy the church is to destroy what even Attila spared, and so outrage the conscience and instinct of the world. ”

“ The Serbian people, who have made the greatest sacrifice and given the finest proofs of their loyalty and fidelity toward the Allies, may therefore be certain that their sacrifices have not been in vain, and that their ideals will be realized if they continue to give in the future the evidence of their military and civil virtues, and if, as in the past, they abhor all intrigues having for their aim the destruction of our concord and union in defense of the interests of our people, who bear three names, but who form but one nation. ”

“ It is amazing how soon one gets assimilated to the most horrifying environment. In a few days one can walk through a town which has been turned into heaps without even a shock of wonder, just as at home one reads the war news and the list of the dead without any realization. In these days we need to be stung broad awake now and then. A city in ruins becomes deadly monotonous—until one is wakened. ”

“ If Rumania refuses the German conditions today she may be able to resist another month, but the results will be fatal. A month later she might have to lose even the shadow of independence which is left to her now; and then, no doubt, the Germans would deal with her in the same way as they dealt with occupied France and with Belgium. The whole Rumanian army would be made prisoners, and would be sent to work on the western front against the Allies, while the civilian population would be compelled to work in ammunition and other factories for the Kaiser's army. ”

“ On account of the Germans' conduct in the war, which surpassed all known horror and barbarism, not sparing even neutral nations, the United States became convinced that it was its duty to restrain this bestial force if the world were not to fall under the yoke of Prussian militarism. America entered the war to defend civilization and the right of people to dispose of themselves. ”

“ Respect for treaties is the basis of the moral and juridical relations of States and the condition of an honest and regular international order. Carried into the war by a will to compel respect for a treaty which Russia had guaranteed, Belgium is pursuing the struggle without wavering, and at the price of the most cruel sacrifices. She considers that the promise of Russia, in which she trusted, is still binding. She refuses to believe that the Russian people, master of its destinies, will irrevocably abandon the promises made in its name. ”

“ Deliver us from the blows of injustice and grant that our courage may control our fears."
In the name of the freedom of the Church, in the name of the sanctity of the Catholic religion, in the name of international law, we condemn and reprove the seizure of the bells and organs of our churches; we forbid the clergy and faithful of our diocese to co-operate toward their removal; we refuse to accept the price of the sacred objects taken from us by violence. ”

“ All such intrigues and calumnies, have only one end—to destroy the faith which our allies have in the Serbian people, to rupture the national concord, and by our discord and quarrels to assure the conquest of the Serbian Nation. ”

“ Money, munitions, and men. The first we have not, as Germany has already impoverished us; the second, we have no means of supplying, because we lack the first. Therefore, Germany can have reference only to men. Men from a self-declared democracy to fight in the ranks of autocracy? Unthinkable. Lithuania would not consent. Are her citizens to be dragooned into the ranks of the Kaiser? This would be an abridgment of the sovereignty which Germany has already recognized, for Chancellor von Hertling's reply stated, "We hereby recognize Lithuania as free and independent." ”