Various

“ The Foreign Legion is not particularly well fed at any time—coffee and dry bread for breakfast, soup with lumps of meat in it for luncheon, with rice to follow, and the same plus coffee for dinner, and not too much of anything, either. But in our case all the grub had to be brought in buckets from the relief post, four miles away, by squads leaving the trenches at three A. M., ten A. M., and five P. M., and a tough job it was, what with the darkness and the mud and the shell holes and the German cannonade, to say nothing of occasional snipers taking pot shots at you with rifles. ”

“ Every time the French troops in the trenches endeavored to signal to their oncoming comrades hidden German sharpshooters picked off the signalers. Soon the position seemed to be almost desperate; every moment the intrenched French soldiers expected to hear the hideous swish of the Maxims mowing down their unsuspecting comrades. ”

“ It is indeed not enough merely to belong to a military society and wear a festive black coat on the occasion of celebrating the birthday of the Kaiser and King, or to drink at comfortable ease in a cosy tavern an occasional glass of beer, pledging the health of our troops. The main thing is to give freely and gladly also of one's property and fortune. ”

“ One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what he had been through. The French are fighting [43] hard all round us with a grit and go that will carry them through.
Have you ever seen a little man fighting a great, big, hulking giant who keeps on forcing the little chap about the place until the giant tires himself out, and then the little one, who has kept his wind, knocks him over? That's how the fighting here strikes me.
We are dancing about round the big German Army, but our turn will come. ”

“ British, French, and Belgian troops are greeted with cheers by the people as they march from spells of duty in the trenches to the villages in the rear. These men are jaded and worn. They stay in the trenches for days at a time and are constantly under artillery fire as well as being subjected to infantry attacks.
As one group goes back to rest, another moves forward to take its place, and the men going into action cheer those who are retiring. ”

“ A gunroom officer in a battle cruiser writes:
The particular ship we were engaged with was in a pitiful plight when we had finished with her—her [48] funnels shot away, masts tottering, great gaps of daylight in her sides, smoke and flame belching from her everywhere. She speedily heeled over and sank like a stone, stern first. So far as is known, none of her crew was saved. She was game to the last, let it be said, her flag flying till she sank, her guns barking till they could bark no more.
Although we ourselves suffered no loss, we had some very narrow escapes. ”

“ It was during one of the almost innumerable fights which, battles in themselves, are making up that Homeric struggle of the nations on the River Aisne that the Colonel leading the gallant Second was shot down. Machine guns were raking the quickly thrown-up trenches; showers of rifle bullets were falling everywhere around. With that heroism which takes account of nothing save the object in view, Jean rushed out of his shelter to carry his Colonel to safety. ”

“ It seems to exert the whole of its force in waves like the ripples made when a large stone is thrown into a pond. The men go down like ninepins; buildings collapse like houses of playing cards; guns are turned over as if by some unseen hand.
"The explosion raises practically no dust or smoke. Even the earth disturbed by the case of the bomb striking the ground is instantly flattened out by the same extraordinary waves of force. Extreme cold is produced at the moment of the explosion. It is so intense that I felt it myself when I dropped my first bomb at a height of about 800 feet. ”

“ A dispatch from Flanders to the London Daily Mail, referring to the condition of the Germans on the Yser, said:
"Nine hundred and ninety-one prisoners bagged in the fighting in the neighborhood of Ypres on December 2 came to my notice to-day. If these are a sample of the men left behind, then the German army in western Flanders is in a sorry state. They walked dejectedly and cursed the guards for hurrying them into anything more than a mile an hour. Altogether, they were as sad a crew as ever surrendered. ”

“ Do you realize that one word, 'Go,' from you may send another man to fight for our King and our country? When the war is over and your husband or your son is asked, 'What did you do in the great war?' is he going to hang his head because you would not let him go? ”

“ The most dramatic letters come from the French. On one of the fields of battle, when the Red Cross soldiers were collecting the wounded after a heavy engagement, there was found a half sheet of notepaper, on which was written a message for a woman, of which this is the translation:
Sweetheart: Fate in this present war has treated us more cruelly than many others. If I have not lived to create for you the happiness of which both our hearts dreamed, remember that my sole wish is now that you should be happy. ”

“ All Fall in a Heap.
"Then human nature could stand no more, and all three fell, utterly exhausted, in a heap together. All through the long night, a night continuously [25] broken by the roar of cannon, death watched over that strange sleeping place of the three comrades of three great warring nations.
"In the morning, shells bursting near them aroused the English officer and the French soldier. Their German neighbor was dead, and for a long time they could only wonder how the day of battle was going. ”

“ At last only the Lieutenant and one soldier were left alive, both wounded. Again they refused to give in, and they had to kill the Lieutenant before the last survivor finally threw down his rifle and let them carry him off. I heard he died on the way to the station, and I'm mighty sorry; he was a white man, if he was a German.
One remarkable thing about the prisoners we did get was their exceedingly thorough knowledge of everything going on, not only of the war in general, but of all that was taking place back of our trenches. Their spy system is something marvelous. ”

“ Within one's range of vision, with a strong field glass, there are probably concealed not fewer than 100,000 men, yet except for the few French soldiers with rifles in their hands standing or kneeling in the immediate vicinity and keenly peering over the flat land toward the positions held by the Germans, no human presence was noticeable.
A staff officer said that behind a slight slope 300 yards away many German guns were hidden, but only an occasional burst of flame and a sharp whirring sound coming from an indefinite point told of this artillery. ”

“ Some of the Germans don't understand why Irishmen should fight so hard for England, but that just shows how little they know about us.
Seven British soldiers who after the fighting round Mons last week became detached from their regiments and got safely through the German lines arrived in Folkestone to-day from Boulogne. They belonged to the Irish Rifles, Royal Scots, Somerset Light Infantry, Middlesex and Enniskillen Fusiliers, and presented a bedraggled appearance, wearing old garments given them by the French to aid their disguise. ”

“ It is a curious thing that shell explosions always make hens lay. Just whether it's shock or not no one is able to say as yet, but as soon as the soldiers see a stray chicken after a fusillade they make a dash for it in hopes of finding an egg. Some of the soldiers are suggesting running a poultry farm on the explosion system.
Petrograd reports that the German officers in command of the Turks induced the temperate Osmanlis to drink cognac before going into battle. Russian soldiers assert that many Turks fell from dizziness before reaching the Russian bayonets. ”

“ The State of Georgia has been stripped of mules for the British army in France. Every negro who has a long-eared mule, not too antiquated, has offered the beast for sale to the agents of the British Government. Some Southerners foresee danger in the heavy draft of mules from the South.
A French infantryman writing to a friend in this country says: "At night we crawl forward and dig ourselves in. During the day we hide behind the mounds of earth we have thrown up and we fight foot for foot any attempts they make to advance. ”

“ For my part, auto racing—including one peach of a smash-up in a famous race—followed by three years of flying, had taken the edge off my capacity for thrills, but I thought I'd get a new line of excitement with the legion in a big war, and I reckon most of the other boys had much the same idea. ”

“ Winter begins officially in Russia with the closing of navigation on the Neva, but already snow is lying on the ground on the western frontier, and in Poland there are severe frosts at night.
A new touch of horror is introduced by the freezing of the ground, which makes it practically impossible to dig graves for the great number of dead in the woods, where recent floods washed the bodies from the shallow graves in which they had been hastily buried.
The villagers report the presence of an unparalleled number of wolves, and have petitioned the army authorities to detach soldiers to shoot them. ”

“ This book presents a clear exposition of the German attitude in the European War, and predicts with remarkable accuracy the plan of campaign of the German Army in their attacks on Belgium and France. General Bernhardi claims that England is stationary or retrogressive in the world's progress, that Germany is the coming world power, who by her rise will elevate the world's standard of civilization, art and commerce; that Germany's rise is in fact civilization's greatest asset. ”

“ One leg had to be amputated, and, besides that, he had half a dozen other wounds. His dog came with him—hunting dog of some kind. This dog had saved his master's life. They were in the trenches together, when a shell burst in such a way as to collapse the whole trench. Every one in it was killed or buried in the collapse, and this dog dug and dug until he got his master's face free, so that he could breathe, and then he sat by him until some reinforcements came and dug them all out. Every one was dead but this man. We have both the dog and the man with us. ”

“ Dear Gen. von Hindenburg: I read in the paper that October 2 is the anniversary of your birthday. The public school of Battau, Fischhausen county, sends its heartiest congratulations and hopes that you will continue to give the Russians a good thrashing. We very often play soldier, but nobody wants to be the Russ, saying that as such they get beaten up too much. I am also sending you a picture in this letter showing us lined up as soldiers. I am the leader, and have the Iron Cross on my chest. On another picture the girls are seen knitting socks for the soldiers. ”

“ Do not believe it! The German soldier is splendid in every way. His courage, his thoroughness, his organization, as well as the equipment and bearing of the troops, challenge comparison. The German soldiers always take the offensive. I have the greatest admiration for them, and so has every one who knows them."
NOT ALL HATE!
Chancellor Lloyd George has contributed a message to the London Methodist Times, in which he says:
"I recently visited one of the battlefields of France. I saw in a village being shelled by German guns a prisoner of war just being brought into the French line. ”

“ The London Daily Mail's Paris correspondent reports an interview with a French airman on the new French air bomb.
"I have used both the dynamite bomb and the [108] new bomb," said the aviator. "The two are very similar in size and weight, but the effect as seen from above is very different.
"When a dynamite bomb falls upon a body of men you can see the bodies leap up in air. It is like a small volcano in action. When the new bomb bursts it simply lays everything out flat within the area of its explosion. ”

“ Fifteen hundred British men and officers are in the base hospital at Boulogne suffering from frozen feet. Fully one thousand of this number must have one or both feet severed, owing to the deadening of the nerves, which makes futile all attempts at treatment. Chilblains and frostbites have been depleting the ranks worse than bullets and shrapnel, and once a man's foot is frozen he is through, as far as fighting is concerned, for the rest of the war. ”

“ As the Guardsman was eating, he and Jean discovered that near them was a wounded German soldier, who, recovering from the delirium of wounds, was crying out for food and drink. The Englishman, taking the flask, which had still some wine in it, and also the remainder of the food from the Frenchman's knapsack, managed, though suffering great pain, to roll himself along till he reached the spot where the German soldier lay. There, however, he found he was, by himself, too weak to give the poor fellow anything. ”

“ Many of the Allied soldiers are in the hospitals "wounded without wounds." They have been so dazed by the shock of exploding shells that it was deemed best to invalid them for a while. In some cases the shells destroy a man's memory. One corporal was brought in who remembered his name and the events preceding the war, but has utterly forgotten anything subsequent to the mobilization. ”