WHY ITALY ENTERED THE WAR.

Italy's reasons for entering the war, aside from her demands for territory, in exchange for continuance of neutrality, have to do with matters of years gone by, when she began the struggle for her liberation from the Austrian domination. Italy desired, among other things, to acquire Trentino, Goritz, and other adjacent territory controlled by Austria, but Italian in every attribute. Trentino is a rocky region, and strategically valuable to the country possessing it, which was proved by the terrible struggle which the Italians were forced to make in their attacks against the Austrian forces.

The city of Trent is the capital of Trentino, famous in history, and the seat of the long church council in 1545-46. It was in turn controlled by Roman, Goth, Hun, Lombard and Holy Roman Empire. It is the site of many historic buildings, notably the cathedral of Trent, which is a fine example of Lombard architecture, and the church of Santa Maria Maggorie, where the famous Council of the Roman Catholic Church was held. There are old towers, and libraries rich in manuscripts.

Trentino is famous for its mountain passes, over which the Italians have been compelled to drag their heavy artillery and implements of war. The Alpini, the mountaineer soldiers of Italy, are among the most picturesque in the world. They have scaled the almost perpendicular faces of the Alps, climbing from crag to crag with their bodies roped together, dragging machine guns in pieces strapped to their shoulders. Tolmino, Trieste, Istria, Dalmatia, Avlona, the prime harbor of Albania (seized by Italy in the fall of 1916). These are little spots in the territory logically Italian, which Italy covets.



DIVIDED INTO SIXTEEN DEPARTMENTS.

Italy, since its consolidation into one kingdom in 1870, has been divided into sixteen departments comprising sixty-nine provinces. The country has a total area of 110,623 square miles, and a population of a little more than 35,000,000. The Roman Catholic Church is irrevocably linked to the history of Italy and Rome, its capital, marked the farthest advance of civilization in the ancient days. It possesses four distinct zones, ranging from the almost arctic cold of the mountain belts to an almost tropical heat in the southern lowlands. It is one of the picturesque countries of the world, a center of art, industry and travel.

Servia, which is separated from Austria-Hungary by the Danube, is of precisely the same character as the other rich, mountainous region. The country was subjugated by the Turks, who retained possession of it until 1717. Austria then wrested control from the Turks, and held it until 1791, when Turkey again dominated it. In 1805 the Servians revolted, and secured temporary independence, only to again come under the Ottoman rule. Again it secured freedom in 1815, and by the Treaty of Paris, independent existence was secured for it. Turkey became only a nominal authority. It became a kingdom in 1882, after having become absolutely independent with the Berlin Treaty.

The people are Slavonic, and kin to the Croats of ancient history. They are described as having come from Poland and Galicia, moving down the Danube, into what is the present kingdom. In the fourteenth century the Servian empire comprised the whole Balkan peninsula, from Greece to Poland, and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. But Servia warred with Turkey, and her troops were defeated in the great battle at Kossovo, and the Ottoman power became supreme. The country has an area of about 34,000 square miles and a population of 4,600,000.

LITTLE BOSNIA'S FUTURE.

Bosnia, where was assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, of Austria, was a Turkish province, west of Servia, and under the treaty of Berlin was to be administered for an undefined period by the Austrian government. The little section contains about 16,000 square miles and has a population of about 1,750,000, largely of Slavonic origin. They are partly Mohammedans, partly Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics. In the middle ages Bosnia belonged to the Eastern Empire. Later it became a separate kingdom, dependent upon Hungary, only to be conquered by the Turks. It is the mountainous, rugged country of the Julian and Dinaric Alps, but has many fertile valleys, and is well watered by the river Save, and its numerous tributaries.

Greece, the modern kingdom, is one of the countries that for centuries were politically included within the limits of the Turkish Empire. In its present form it represents but a portion of that country, famous in history, as the Greece of the Ancients—that classic land which holds the most conspicuous place in the pages of ancient history—but still it is inclusive of the greatest names belonging to the glorious past. It is the country of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and Argos. It is separated from Turkey by a winding boundary, extending from the Gulf of Arta on the west to the Gulf of Salonica on the east.

The earliest settlers were the Pelasgi, who were in course of time replaced by the Hellenes. They, in turn, were succeeded by the Phoenicians, who swayed the country. Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Corinth came into existence and became the centers of political government, of the most progressive advancement in civilization. Civil discords brought on first the Peloponnesian War, about 434 B.C., and made them prey to the Macedonians. Successively invaded by Goths, Vandals and Normans the country came into the possession of the Turks in 1481, though for two centuries the power of the Turk was questioned by the Venetians. Revolt was had from the Ottoman yoke in 1821, and independence was secured by the interference of foreign powers after the defeat of the Turk at the Navarino, in 1827. Through the succeeding years it has been a protected monarchy.

ONE OF THE BALKAN GROUP.

Roumania, the largest of the Balkan group, lying between Russia on the north, and Bulgaria on the south, is the home of the Gacians, descendants of the warlike tribes who for years held their own against Greek and Roman. After the fall of Rome the province became a melting pot, through which the hordes of invaders, passing from Russia to Asia, were in a sense made one people. The Goths, the Huns, the Lombards, the Bulgars and the Magyars traversed the region, leaving many settlers. It became divided into two provinces, Moldavia and Wallachia, known as the Danubian provinces.

Both provinces were conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and under Peter the Great the Russians attempted the conquest of the provinces. In 1859 the two provinces were united under a prince whose independence both Turkey and Russia recognized, and in 1881 the country declared itself a kingdom. The province of Wallachia derives its name from the people who early settled there, the Wallachs. The Roumanians claim descent from Vlachi, a colony of Romans, who settled in Thrace, and, in the twelfth century, emigrated to the Danube. The name Roumania is derived from the word Roman, the country having originally been "the Land of the Roumani." Roumania has a population of about 7,600,000 and comprises 64,000 square miles.

Macedonia, famous country of Greece in the time of Philip, father of Alexander the Great, embraced the entire region from the Scardian Mountains to Thessaly, and from the Epirus and Illyria to the river Nestos, taking in what is now part of Salonica. It was reduced by the Persians and subsequently Alexander the Great made it the nucleus of a vast and powerful empire along with Greece. Ultimately it passed under Roman sway, until it was ceded, in 1913, to Greece.

AN OBJECT OF CONTENTION.

Alsace-Lorraine is worthy of note, as comprising one of the territories which for centuries have been the cause of conflict between Germany and France. It is pointed to as the physical evidence of the humiliation of France at the hands of the Germans, in 1870, and has for nearly one-half a century been a German imperial territory. The surrender of Alsace and part of Lorraine was made the principal condition of peace on the settlement of the war of 1870. Bismarck, it is said, might have been content with a language boundary, taking only that portion of the country in which lived those who spoke the German tongue.

For strategic purposes, however, Alsace and Lorraine, with the exception of one district, were taken. The strip of country was to be governed by the power of the German Emperor until the constitution of the German Empire was established. Many of the inhabitants opposed the Prussian domination, and a vote was taken on who would declare themselves Germans and remain in the territory, or French and leave. More than 40,000 left the country and went into France.

The German language was made compulsory in the schools, the courts and the legislative body. The French never forgot their loss, and revenge for that loss has been a subject of consideration in their foreign policy ever since the war of 1871. Alsace and Lorraine contain about 5600 square miles, and together have a population of about two million. About 85 per cent of the people speak German.



PICTURESQUE TURKEY.

Turkey, one of the picturesque and ancient countries which is aligned with the Germans, is a Mohammedan state of the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Europe and western Asia, whose holdings in Europe have been steadily decreasing, especially during recent years. The immediate possessions of Turkey, or those directly under the Sultan's rule at the time this country became involved in the great world war, extended from Montenegro, Bosnia, Servia and eastern Roumelia on the north, to the Agean Sea and Greece on the south, and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, the Straits of Otranto and the Ionic Sea. In September, 1911, the Italian government sent a long list of claims made by Italy against Turkey for economic and commercial discrimination against Italian commerce, and the person of Italian citizens all over the world. A reply was demanded within twenty-four hours, and failing to receive a reply considered satisfactory, Italy immediately sent warships to Tripoli, bombarded and captured the city. This meant that Turkey has lost one of her most important seaports, consequently weakening her position.

The immediate possessions of Turkey in Europe, at this time, had an area of 65,350 square miles, with a population of 6,200,000. In Asia Turkey had possessions of 693,610 square miles, with a population of 16,900,000, while in Africa about 398,000 square miles belonged to the Turkish Empire, on which lived 1,000,000 persons. This gave Turkey an area of about 1,157,860 square miles, with a population of 24,100,000. A number of islands in the Agean Sea belong to Turkey, and Egypt is also nominally part of the kingdom of the Sultan.



The population is a motley assortment of races, nationalities and creeds. About 38 per cent being Ottomans or Turks. The Slavic and Rouman races come next in importance, then the Arabs, the remaining population consisting of Moors, Druses, Kurds, Tartars, Albanians, Circassians, Syrians, Armenians, and Greeks, besides Jews and Gypsies.

PHOENIX OF THE GREEK EMPIRE.

The Ottoman Empire arose from the ruins of the old Greek Empire, early in the fifteenth century, Constantinople being made its capital in 1453, after its capture by Mohammed II. At the accession of Mohammed IV, in 1648, the Turkish Empire was at the zenith of its power. Internal corruption caused loss of power, and in 1774, a large slice of territory was ceded to Russia. In 1821 Greece became independent. The Crimean War, in 1854-56, checked Russia for a while, but in 1875 the people of Herzegovina rebelled. A year later the Servians and Montenegrins revolted, and in 1877 Russia began hostile operations in both parts of the Turkish Empire. At this time Roumania declared her independence. After the fall of Kars and of Plevna, the Turkish resistance completely collapsed, and in 1878 Turkey was compelled to agree to the Treaty of San Stefano.

Within the year the Treaty of Berlin declared Roumania, Servia and Montenegro independent; Roumanian Bessarabia was ceded to Russia, Austria was empowered to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Bulgaria was made a principality. The main events in the history of the Ottoman Empire since the Treaty of Berlin were the French invasion of Tunis in 1881, the Treaty with Greece, executed under pressure of the Great Powers in 1881, by which Greece obtained Thessaly and a strip of Epirus; the occupation of Egypt by Great Britain in 1882; the revolution of Philippopolis in 1885, by which eastern Roumelia became united with Bulgaria. In 1908 Bulgaria declared its independence and the Young Turk Party extorted a constitution and a parliament from Abdul-Hamud II, who was deposed in 1909 by the unanimous vote of the national assembly. Mohammed V, eldest brother of the deposed Sultan succeeded to the throne.

Russia, "the Great Bear," whose part in the war brought on internal strife and revolution which robbed Czar Nicholas of his throne, traces its history back for more than ten centuries, when the Norse invaded the territory and founded Veliki Novgorod, for many years one of the chief Russian cities. The Norse, to use the modern vernacular, "put Russia on the map" when the Russian army fought its way to the very walls of Constantinople. Much of the early history of the country is legendary, and one of the famous stories is that after Igor, who commanded the great armies, was put to death by rebellious subjects, his widow sought out the territory where her husband had lost his life and pretending to make peace with them, requested every householder to give her a pigeon.

WINGED FIREBRANDS.

When they gladly complied with her request she sent the tame birds back home with flaming firebrands tied to their tails, and they entered their lofts or rests and started fires which destroyed the city of Korosten. The ascendancy of the Romanoff dynasty, which maintained in Russia through the centuries, was established through the atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, who is said to have absolutely destroyed the descendants of the Rurik, the first Norse chieftain. Ivan the Terrible was the first Czar of Russia. He conquered Servia and his domestic infamies and intrigues are among the historical scandals of the country.

Through every reign in Russian history there ran stories of terrible crime, cruelties, infamies, immoralities and degradation. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible came Fedor, one of his sons, who was a weakling in the hands of the Duma of five, one of whom was Boris Godounoff. Fedor reigned but a few years, and Godounoff was elected Czar. He was ambitious, and was founder of the system of serfdom, and also of the Russian State Church, and like many of the other rulers of Russia, met death through infamy, supposedly having been poisoned.



BASE IMPOSTER SLAIN.

Boris Godounoff was succeeded by his son Feodor, but he was seized by a pretender, and with his mother, thrown into prison, where they were murdered. The discovery of the plot, which was laid at the door of the King of Poland, produced an uprising and Czar Dimitry the Impostor was slain. Vasili Shouyskie, leader of the mob that slew Dimitry, was proclaimed Czar, but pretenders sprang up, and one of these, who posed as a false Dimitry, invaded Russia from Poland, and established a rival imperial court at Toushin, and some of the Russian cities swore allegiance to him.

Vasili Shouyskie held out at Moscow, and after a time Dimitry's cause failed, whereupon Sigsmund, of Poland, invaded Russia, and put forward his son Vladislav. Vasili, roused to anger, committed acts which provoked Moscow, and in 1610 he was compelled to abdicate, and a council of nobles was formed to run the government until a Czar could be chosen. Vladislav was finally selected, but Feodor Romanoff sought to prevent his being crowned. There was a period of anarchy, cities were burned, and chaos was complete.

The dignitaries of the church and state finally set to work and supported the candidacy of Mikhial Feodorovitch Romanoff, who was the first Romanoff Czar. He reorganized the empire, and reigned for thirty-three years. His successor, Alexis, the direct heir, reigned for thirty-one years, and cultivated friendly relations with Ukraine and the Cossack country. He was followed by Feodor II, and then came Peter the Great. There were two claimants to the throne, Ivan and Peter, both sons of Alexis by separate wives, and the difficulty was settled by letting the two reign jointly under the regency of Sophia, a sister of Ivan.

When Ivan died Peter assumed the reins, and it was he who gave Russia a frontage on the Black Sea, and on the Baltic, and built St. Petersburg. He did much for the development of Russia, creating a navy and a merchantile marine.

Catherine the First, his widow, followed him in reign, and at her death, Peter II occupied the center of the stage. At his death there was chaos again and counter claims. Anna of Courtland, a daughter of Ivan, brother of Peter the Great, was finally elected sovereign, but she was a mere puppet, vesting her authority in a High Council.

FAMILY'S WRETCHED CAREER.

During her reign her lover, named Biren, held sway and distinguished himself by sending thousands of political exiles to Siberia. At the death of Anna, Ivan IV, her grandnephew, reigned, but was deposed and sent to prison for life, while Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Peter the Great, succeeded him. She permitted the government to be run on comparatively honest lines by favorites, and while they ruled she drank herself to death.

Her nephew, Peter III, succeeded her. He was incompetent and a tool in the Prussian hands. His wife was a German princess, and led a movement which ended in his being deposed, imprisoned and murdered.

Catherine, widow of the murdered Peter, succeeded. She was known as Catherine the Great, and is credited with having been the most infamous of women in all history. Catherine was succeeded by Paul, who was assassinated by his own courtiers when he was on the point of joining Napoleon Bonaparte in his conquest of India.

His son was Alexander I, who added Finland and Poland to Russia, and founded the Holy Alliance. He was followed by his son Nicholas, who ruled for 30 years, and crushed the Poles and Hungarians, but died of a broken heart in the Crimean War.

Next came Alexander II, who gained fame as liberator of the serfs, and died the victim of a Nihilist bomb thrower. Alexander III succeeded him, and then came Nicholas II, the last Czar, whose reign lasted 22 years. The beginning of the end was marked by the request of the workingmen in 1905 for an increase in civil rights. They were fired upon, and there was general disorder, until the Czar proclaimed a constitution, and established a Duma, or national parliament, which met for the first time in 1906.

BETRAYAL OF RUSSIA'S MILITARY PLANS.

The outbreak of the war was marked by the personal decree of the Czar to change the name of the capital, St. Petersburg, to Petrograd, but his evident intent to eliminate evidences of German influence did not stop the betrayal of Russia's military plans by German spys within the court circles, and it was charged that supplies were withheld from the Russian army by those within the charmed circle, who were friendly to Germany.

Russia was a party to the Franco-Russian and Anglo-Russian agreement, which constituted the basis of the Triple Entente, but conditions were such that the soldiers refused to fight, and the situation culminated in the uprising which ended with the abdication of the Czar, in behalf of his brother, who, however, declined to accept the throne, unless he should be elected by the votes of the Russian people. The Duma thereupon decided to organize a republican form of government, and so the Russian Republic came into being in March, 1917.

Spain, a fertile country in the southwestern part of Europe, has played a prominent part in the development of the world. She has a coastline extending nearly 1500 miles, and there are about 200,000 square miles included in her territory. The coastlands and the southern section of the country are especially rich in fruits and agriculture. Although watered by many rivers, the land, for the most part, is artificially irrigated.

Up until 1898 Spain held possession of magnificent colonies in Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines, but now her colonial possessions are confined to a strip on the west coast of the Sahara, and the island of Fernando Po, with some smaller possessions on the Guinea coast in Africa. Their total area is about 434,000 square miles, the total population being 10,000,000.

SPAIN, PAST AND PRESENT.

Spain formerly composed the ancient provinces of New and Old Castile, Leon, Asturias, Galicia, Estremadura, Andalusia, Aragon, Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia, Navarre and the Basque Provinces. These, since 1834, have been divided into 49 provinces. The capital of Spain is Madrid, and the present constitution dates from 1876. There is a Congress, which is composed of deputies, each one representing 50,000 of the population.

The Roman Catholic faith is the established form of religion, and the priesthood possesses considerable wealth and power, although the dominant influence once possessed has been curtailed of recent years. The peace strength of the army is about 83,000, and what navy she has is practically new, as the Spanish navy was annihilated in the war with the United States in 1898.

During recent years the republican tendencies among the people have found vent in socialism. The Spanish socialist leaders belong mostly to the intellectuals, and here again is the weakness of the movement, whether considered as a means of giving Spain a republic or of liberating her political system under monarchical form. Some of the intellectual leaders among the socialists headed straight for philosophic anarchy, while others expended their energies in building castles in the clouds.

The substantial socialism of the recent period was, however, based on the workingmen's movement. Before the outbreak of the great war the tendency was to affiliate with the groups in other countries of Europe which advocated socialism as an international creed. But when the German socialists placed their country above internationalism, and the French socialists did the same, and the Italian socialists joined in the agitation to force the government into war to get back territory lost to Austria, the international basis of Spanish socialism disappeared.



CHAPTER XV.

MODERN WAR METHODS.

INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE AS AGAINST MASS MOVEMENTS—TRENCH WARFARE A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK—RATS AND DISEASE—SURGERY'S TRIUMPHS—CHANGED TACTICS—ITALIAN MOUNTAIN FIGHTING.

Warfare such as carried on in the Great World War is so different from that of any other of the great wars which the world has seen, that it might be described as a method of fighting distinctively unique. Undoubtedly, more ancient methods, and even ancient weapons, have been employed than were used in any of the wars which have changed, from time to time, the boundary lines of nations. The fighting of mass against mass has been practically obliterated, and modern evolutions where the plan is man to man have developed a mode of fighting where terrible execution has resulted.

Undoubtedly this means of fighting has developed the personal initiative of the soldiers, and the modern fighting machine of the nations is of a high standard, which, together with death-dealing weapons, has resulted in terrible havoc. Massed movements, such as carried on in the War of the Rebellion, have been practically done away with, and although there have been long and costly sieges, they have been carried on by tedious trench fighting, airships, hand grenades, and massive shells fired from guns of great caliber, and with a range which is really marvellous.

Shells are fired, shrapnel in some cases, explosive shells in others, which are timed to the second, so that when fired from guns many miles from the objective point, they explode at a measured distance from the earth. They are exploded within a gauged distance of the target, and the execution is done over a measured area. On the shells are indicators. Within the shrapnel shells are hundreds of small shot. As the shell explodes the shots are scattered over the enemy, and death and destruction are unavoidable.

With bomb shells, fired from guns of the largest caliber, there are also indicators which are timed to the second. The range and time of explosion previously figured out by officers, the shell explodes where it is intended that it shall, and the work of the great explosive is done with resultant damage.

WAR'S MANY DEVELOPMENTS.

The war has developed many of the new methods of fighting and revived many of the old means of warfare. Cavalry has not been as active in the relation in the great war as in any of the wars of comparatively recent date, because of the extensive trench warfare which has formed so much of the fighting plan. Fighting has been a question of trench raids, and barrage fire, followed by the infantry charge through shell holes. The impression brought home to the modern observer is that the older recognized methods of warfare are gone for good.

The thing which war changed in the work of the cavalryman is in the nature of an addition, rather than a subtraction from his duties and the training he must have. The day of cavalry—as cavalry and nothing else—has passed. For today the cavalryman must be familiar not only with the sword, lance and revolver, but with the rifle as well. It has been demonstrated that such long periods of trench warfare may develop that it becomes necessary for him to dismount and make himself valuable in the scheme of military economy by fighting as infantry until such time as the enemy line is broken and he can again take to his horse and the work of harrying the retreating foe.

The war has been full of surprising results as regards cavalry. It was popularly supposed that in facing such terrible modern weapons as the repeating rifle of long range, the machine gun and the automatic field pieces which have become so well known as the French "75s," any body of cavalry which attempted to charge the enemy would be annihilated.

CAVALRY'S SUCCESSFUL CHARGES.

Yet all through the early stages of the war one reads of desperate, and, what is more to the point, successful charges made by British cavalry against batteries of German field pieces. There was one instance in France, just back of the Belgian frontier, where a charge of British lancers against a German battery, which had a commanding position, saved the day for a greatly-outnumbered allied detachment, which was conducting that most difficult of all maneuvers, a rear guard action, covering the retreat of the body of the army. The charge of the lancers took the Germans so by surprise, and was executed with such speed, that despite the heavy fire they poured into the advancing horsemen the latter were at work among them with spear and saber before reinforcements could be brought up. Then the cavalry, dismounting and unslinging their carbines, defended the position with such tenacity that the German advance was delayed several hours, sufficient for the rest of the allied forces to make good its withdrawal and the consolidation of the new lines chosen for defense.

This idea of cavalry serving in the double role of infantry and cavalry is a distinctly American development, a trick which the Federal and Confederate armies taught the world during the Civil War, and of which the British made excellent use in South Africa against the Boers. The fact which this war has established, however, is that the older use of cavalry, in the charge against infantry, artillery and even entrenched positions is still of great value. The idea had developed from the tactics so largely employed in the Civil War of using the cavalry as mounted infantry, that the increased deadliness of modern weapons would make this use of cavalry the sole use.

Now, however, it seems that not even the lance is to be discounted. Given the opportunity to reach his objective, the lance becomes a terrible weapon in the hands of the horseman. In hand-to-hand fighting the man with the rifle and bayonet has some chance against the mounted man with the saber. While fighting upward from a lower level he has a pretty long reach, and the advantage of being completely in control of his own movements, whereas even the most expert horseman cannot control the step and movement of his mount as well as a man can control his own. Barring fire, however, the infantryman has no chance against the lance, with the speed and momentum of the mounted man behind it.

So, for this reason, though they are cumbersome weapons under ordinary circumstances, and make a detachment equipped with them much more likely to be seen, lances were retained by many of the British cavalry regiments, just as the German Uhlans retained them.

CAVALRY'S IMPORTANT SERVICE.

One of the most important services which cavalry fulfills in modern warfare is that of drawing the enemy's fire at the time his positions are being approached. This is done to obtain some idea of his force and the disposition of his guns.

Cavalry detachments are sent scurrying across the front, as though threatening an attack, deliberately furnishing a mark for the enemy gunners that this object of ascertaining his strength may be attained.

The more ordinary work of scouting, advance guard work, and riding wide on the flanks of an advancing force are parts of the cavalryman's work which are more familiar.

In the European conflict with tremendous concentration of troops and continued occupation of the same territory the foraging feature of cavalry work disappeared. It is no longer possible for an army to "live on the country as it goes." Food and supplies must be brought up from depots in the rear through an entirely separate and specialized department of the military organization, which does its work with a celerity certainly undreamed of in former days, even as late as our own war with Spain.

In the modern campaign trenches have been developed to such an extent that it is really marvellous how the soldiers live, and to what an extent the "underground fortresses" have been used for living as well as fighting purposes.

In a letter written by a French soldier who took part in a successful raid upon a German trench, he adequately describes the luxuries enjoyed by the German soldiers in the front line trenches in the Marne. The letter was written by a youth who had been wounded in the fight, and was mailed in April, 1917.

LUXURIOUS DUGOUTS.

"We are now living in German lines and dugouts—a magnificent work we have just now taken—cement and steel are used with profusion, and electricity in every dugout, even in their front lines. Unharmed casements and machine guns in cemented shelters and light railways and immense reserves of food—thousands of bottles of claret.

"But also, at the middle of each staircase, in the wall, a box with about seventy pounds of cheddite—to blow the shelter up in case of retreat. They knew they might have to go back, as they are doing now. America will gain victory, as until the present moment only the bravery of our soldiers can put them back, with much exertion and frequent loss.

"Our men are magnificent in spite of death. We hope your help may be quick and decisive. I think your flying corps especially may be useful, the more as yesterday, with four fellows, I was run through the field, and in a destroyed trench by a German Albatross shooting a machine gun, and flying very low, he missed us quite near. On the other hand, we have just a few days hence seen a sausage balloon destroyed by our men. Anyhow your help may be decisive.

"I believe your joy is great about the Russian revolution. At home they are happy, too—only let us hope the Russian army may attack this summer—to help us.

"I need not tell you the impression made by your American decision here. We now know victory is sure. Let us hope it may be this year—though you may easily guess such is not my belief—next year.

"I hope my next letter be sent from farther in the German lines—perhaps from a place they have not had time to destroy."

Shorn of all technicalities, the plain method of warfare which has developed as the result of the trench building is that each force establishes lines along miles of front with trenches in rows, one after the other, at measured intervals. The soldiers are thus "entrenched." One force seeks to drive the other from its position.

MANY DEADLY DEVICES.

The force of batteries is directed against the entrenchments, hand grenades, bombs, shells, gases and every device which has fallen to the use of armies is projected at the ditches in which are hidden the enemy soldiers. When, by the concentration of attack the trenches are destroyed or the soldiers driven from their first position, the opposing force has gained if it has succeeded in advancing its own soldiers to occupy and reconstruct the trenches or defences from which the enemy was driven.

The soldiers carry, in addition to the ordinary weapons, a trench spade, and in most cases large knives, which are used to cut away brush or dig in the earth when emergency demands. The close confinement in the trenches tends to develop disease, and the sanitary force of the modern army is a thing that was undreamed of in the olden days. More men died from disease during the Civil War than were killed by bullets or in hand-to-hand encounter.

The percentage of those who die from camp fever has been reduced to a minimum. Napoleon said that armies travel on their stomachs, but the European War and the Russian-Japanese War have proven, as did our campaigns in Cuba and Mexico, that soldiers live by reason of the health which they are permitted to maintain. Some idea of the conditions which developed in the trenches may be gained from a study of the various hospital reports, and investigations which have been made by physicians.

INFECTED WITH ASIATIC JAUNDICE.

Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, completed a series of experiments which showed that apparently healthy wild rats in the European war zone became infected with Weil's disease, or "infectious jaundice," common in Asia. Weil's disease is characterized by sudden onsets of malaise, often intense muscular pain, high fever for several days, followed by jaundice, frequently accompanied by complications. It becomes more virulent as it is successively transmitted from one victim to another. This is supposed to explain the much greater mortality, about 38 per cent. in Japan, as compared with from 2 to 3 per cent. among European soldiers.

The study of the disease was made possible by the successful importation from Japan and Flanders of guinea pigs and rats which had been inoculated with the causative organism in those two countries. Experiments previously made showed that the germ of the disease was carried in the kidneys of a large percentage of apparently healthy wild rats caught near the districts where the disease had been epidemic. Experiments in Europe demonstrated the presence of the germ in rats not only near the infected zones, but also in captured localities some distance from trenches.

For purposes of comparison Dr. Noguchi collected a number of rats in this country and removed their kidneys. His report states that by inoculating the emulsion made of the kidneys of 41 wild rats into 58 guinea pigs during a period of three months, he had been able to produce in three groups of guinea pigs typical cases of infectious jaundice altogether identical with the findings in the guinea pigs which died of the injection of the Japanese and Belgian strains of the disease. The germs taken from wild rats caught near New York produced death in guinea pigs within nine to twelve days.

AMERICA'S GREAT SERVICE IN WAR ZONE.

In studying the conditions and helping to fight the dangers encountered in the battlefields and camps of Europe, no country in the world rendered a greater service than America. Long before the country entered the war hundreds of American nurses, ambulance drivers and surgeons were on the battlefields and in the hospitals of Belgium, France and England. Men who were leaders in the medical and surgical world gave their services to the Allies, and almost every hospital in the United States sent some of its staff.

Through the efforts and study of Dr. Alexis Carrel, of New York, deaths from wounds received in battle were reduced almost 90 per cent. by a system of treatment which he devised. Dr. Carrel began his work in 1914, at Compiegne, in connection with the military hospital, and in collaboration with the Dakin Research Laboratory, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Using a solution of sodium hypochlorite, the plain method of treating wounds which proved such a great boon, was described at the Congress of Surgeons in Philadelphia in 1916, where many of the wonders of war surgery were described. By means of a rubber tube, which is run through or into the wound, the injury is flushed continuously by the solution, for a period of hours or minutes, according to the nature and character of the wound.

The inflammation is reduced, the wound cleaned, and blood poisoning is averted. Under the treatment the soldier's stay in a hospital is reduced weeks and even months, and, as has been stated with authority, where in the old days twenty operations would have been necessary, the modern methods have reduced the percentage to a point where the twenty has become as one.

The story of surgery itself and what it has done in modern warfare would make a wonderful volume. The shattered bones of the legs and arms have been spliced, and laid side by side in open wounds, to knit together and practically form a new limb. Artificial hands, feet, and legs have been made by ingenious mechanics, which are so perfect that those who have been deprived of their natural facilities can use them with a degree of facility never before believed possible.

RESULT OF SCIENTIFIC SURGERY.

Armless men and legless men have worked in the munition factories of both France and of England, and the fact that they are able to do so is due to the genius of surgeons and of scientists. Thoroughness and preparation, coolness in execution and scientific accuracy in all directions is the modern necessity in warfare.

What this means in modern battle, as demonstrated in the last important conflict in the clearing of German East Africa by British forces, was described by Reuters' correspondent in an account of the battle of Rufiji River.

This was the last campaign personally commanded by Major General Jan Christian Smuts, the former Boer commander, and resulted in giving the British control of all the coastline and the inhabitable portion of German East Africa.

For two weary months the army lay upon its weapons, consolidating, reorganizing, rebuilding railway lines and piling up great dumps of food and ridding itself of its sick and wounded. Then it moved forward from Morogoro. The object of the advance was the ejection of the enemy from his trenches on the Mgeta River and the seizure of the passages of the Rufiji River.

The battle was directed and controlled from an observation hill at Dathumi, but General Smuts spent little time on the hill. He had made all the dispositions and issued his orders. Nothing remained for him to do and he was back in his camp calmly reading a book.

In the straw hut the brigadier general sat at a table on which was an oriented map showing the strategic and geographical points of the plans which lay before us, at his elbow the telephone and just below the hut the wireless instrument incessantly emitted sparks. Higher up the slope of the hill were the observing stations of the battery commanders.

SIGNALED BEGINNING OF BATTLE.

The burning of huts at Kiruru signaled the beginning of the battle. The brigadier general, a polite little man who has lectured at the staff college for twenty years and who knows the last word in the science of warfare, especially of artillery, called the howitzer battery by telephone.

"Open fire a little to the right of the palm tree," he said. "You have the elevation and direction. The Nigerians will be on the move." Just behind the palm tree and a little to the right a great brown cloud of mud and smoke rose high in the air. From the plain came the boom of heavy guns and all along the river branch rose clouds of smoke, mud and dust.

The staff officer handed in a telegram reading: "The infantry are now about to advance; they ask artillery support."

"Bring the field guns into action," said the general.

It was all so very matter of fact. This little man, who was about to let loose upon the German trenches a hell's broth of fire and disaster, acted as if he were in his own drawing room, deciding how many lumps of sugar he would take with his tea.

Down below on the plain the howitzers were lobbing 60-pound shells into the German Askaris, the Nigerians were advancing by sharp rushes and the rat-tat of the machine guns and the crackle of musketry broke very faintly. Airplanes sailed above us. A message came from the Nigerians, "We are going to take the enemy's trenches; please lift gunfire." The order was passed along, "All guns lift two degrees."

Little black dots, like tiny ants, are running where the shells are bursting. The Nigerians are rushing the trenches. The forward observing officer reports that the enemy is retiring. The 15-pounders, man-killing guns, shower shrapnel on the German line of retreat.

SUGGESTS A CUP OF TEA.

The infantry report having occupied the German first line trenches, halting for one hour to consolidate. The brigadier-general commented on the difficulty of observation in the humid atmosphere and suggested a cup of tea. It seemed that nothing more would happen until after lunch, so I visited the commander-in-chief. He was occupied for the moment with a volume by George Gisslog and was satisfied with the reports he had received. By dark the whole of the German entrenchments were in our hands.

A volume could be written alone on the changes in tactics which have been developed and practiced by the military geniuses of the contending forces. In the European War the range of artillery and infantry fire was three times what it was in the Franco-Prussian War. The flattening of the trajectory, which means making the bullets go more nearly on a straight line instead of traveling in an arc, has made the fire so effective as to compel the soldiers to "travel on their stomachs." To crawl along the ground like alligators, or advance like moles digging their way into the earth.

The tremendous range of the modern rifle, single arm, or rapid-fire gun, and the development of more powerful explosives for ammunition have wrought this change. The bullet will travel a longer distance at a horizontal position than in the old days when ordinary black powder and a smooth-bore gun were used, and so at hundreds of yards distance the soldiers can aim direct to kill, without making elevation allowances.

The machine gun has made it possible for the men to fire from four to five shots for every one that was fired in the Franco-Prussian War and probably ten for every one that was fired in the Civil War. The only time the soldiers exposed themselves on the army frontiers were when they were storming trenches, and this was not attempted until the trench had suffered bombardment so it was made untenable.

DIFFICULT MOUNTAIN FIGHTING.

Probably nothing in the warfare of nations has been more colorful and replete with surprises than the campaign waged by the Italian soldiers on the Alpine passes between Italy and the Austrian strongholds, and in the discussion of modern warfare, a brief description of some of the work of these intrepid mountain fighters is interesting.

Much of this fighting has been the most difficult known in the annals of modern warfare, save, perhaps, that done by the famous Younghusband British Expedition to Thibet. And that, by comparison, was a very small matter.

The mere height—altitude—at which the Italian warfare against the Austrians was carried on has been sufficient to entail enormous difficulties and a great additional strain, due actually to difficult breathing in a rarefied atmosphere.

The warfare in the clouds which has characterized the struggle along the Isonzo front has been conducted at an altitude seldom less than 8,000 and often rising to 12,000 feet, which is well within the realm of eternal snow.

Naturally, therefore, most of the fighting was done in bitter cold. To this fact add the other that the Italian soldiers who carried it on were almost exclusively men who had not been accustomed to the cold. They had been drawn from among dwellers in a semitropical climate, and one gets an idea of the immense accomplishments of this army which struggled in the skies.

The average American knows the Italian as immensely industrious, but perhaps is disinclined to credit him with great constructive ability or engineering genius. He would change his estimate of him if he could see him fight and study his battlefield. The Italian warfare of the mountain peak and gorges has been a warfare of construction, even more than it has been a warfare of destruction, and has been rendered possible only by the exercise of engineering genius comparable with that which sent our world-beating American railways through the famous Rocky Mountain passes!

HALTED BY INTIMIDATION.

The fact that Italy's warfare has been invariably against positions stronger than her own is the result of the fact that while, since 1866, Austria continually strengthened her frontier with fortifications, most of them of ferro-concrete, the Italians were not able to fortify at all. Every step in that direction brought forth threats of war. These began at a time when Italy was in no condition to fight, before, as a unified nation, she became a world-power.

Being weak, she was prevented from making any preparations for defense against a foe which continually was obviously getting ready for attack upon her. The mere commencement of preparations might have precipitated war. But Austria continually prepared. Besides, the Italians ever have been a peace-loving nation.

As a natural and inevitable consequence of all these conditions all the dominating positions along the Austro-Italian frontier were strongly fortified by the Austrians. They have long occupied the crest of every mountain in such a way that their guns could rake any Italian approach from below, along a front of 450 miles—about the distance from New York to Buffalo, and almost the same as that of the whole French-British-Belgian eastern front in this war.

During the winter of 1916, one of the most exceptionally hard winters known in the annals of the Italian Weather Service, the Italians not only have been fighting for their sunny homeland, but have been fighting in a region of eternal snow.

This snow was an obstacle extremely hard to overcome. It may be said never to have been less than six yards deep on the Isonzo front, so the task of the consolidation of positions, enabling troops at once to resist attack and protect themselves from assault from the rear, was highly difficult.

TYPICAL ROAD BUILDERS.

The Italians were ever road-builders, descendants, as they are, of those Romans who built roads for all Europe. While the Austrians were fully supplied with roads of the best and most modern character, there were hundreds of miles on the Italian side where there were not even mule-tracks.

Here was a vast problem.

Literally millions of soldiers were not free to fight, but had been drafted for the road-building work. Carrying picks and shovels, managing steam-shovels, working electric hoists, stringing supporting cables, they were as truly fighting men, however, as any who ever bore rifles or worked machine-guns.

Miles of the roads were rebuilt under Austrian fire, by men who built them well enough, even in the great 8,000-foot heights, that they could bear heavy artillery of vast weights without suffering damage. They built them in such easy gradients that heavy artillery could be moved speedily, the guns and motor-lorries that passed over them frequently weighing as much as fifteen tons.

Nor did the problem end with the construction of these marvel-roads. It was necessary to transport very heavy war material across stretches where the building of any roads whatever was a sheer impossibility. Often it was necessary to take heavy guns as far as might be upon sleighs and then drag them for considerable distances by hand; quite as often it was imperative that across chasms great cables should be rigged on which the guns might be swung, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of feet above the valleys beneath, from one height to another.

The "wireways" by which much of this unique transportation was accomplished are of Italian invention, as were other notable and essential engineering devices of this great war of mountain transportation.

Such contrivances, known as "teleferrica," were introduced for the first time during the winter of 1916, and by summer there were about 200 along the mountainous front. They not only supplied very advanced positions with armament, ammunition and food, but transported men back and forth between them and lower points.

SYSTEM ONE OF TACKLES.

The system was one of tackles (where guns and other heavy freight were to be moved) or cars (like cradles, where men were to be moved), operated by motor-pulleys directly connected up with great electric power. One of the most astonishing and picturesque uses to which these aerial wireways were put was the movement downward of men wounded at the advanced posts with which the teleferrica communicate.

To see wounded men going down these wireways, mere dots, each representing a suspended stretcher upon which a suffering human being is strapped securely, was described as one of the most amazing spectacles of the whole war. The experience, to some wounded men, swinging sickeningly, dizzyingly alone in midair, was probably more terrifying than actual fighting, although there were few, if any, accidents connected with the wireways.

Not infrequently these wireways were within direct range of the enemy fire, and that complicated matters. So far as is known, there has been no instance of a cable cut by gunfire, but in several districts it was necessary that the men, going to their duty and the wounded going backward, having done theirs, must needs be protected in armored baskets, somewhat like those which often are swung beneath observation balloons on the various fronts.

PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION.

The problems of transportation, great as they are, are by no means the only unique difficulties presented to these brave mountain fighters. In this extraordinary warfare mining by means of high explosives was carried on upon a hitherto unequaled scale. Such work with high explosives was not only continually necessary in the construction of roads and fortifications in a region of solid rock, but sometimes proved the only effective means of attack upon the enemy.

The mine was used as an offensive weapon by both sides, and often with very terrible results.

Perhaps the most extraordinary of the campaign was the mine laid by the Italians after infinitely difficult and very extensive tunneling in solid rock at the Cima del Col di Lana.

This immense effort with explosives blew off the whole top of a mountain—and that mountaintop was thickly occupied by Austrians at the time of the explosion of the mine. None on the Italian side knows exactly what the Austrian casualties were, but it is certain that through this one explosion more than an entire company—that is, more than 400—of the enemy's soldiers were destroyed.

An interesting detail of this operation is the fact that while the Italians were tunneling for this great mine they were perfectly aware that the Austrians also were at work upon a similar effort. It amounted to a race with death, and the Italians won it.

Correspondents agree that the thing which most impresses the visitor to the mountain fronts of the Italian army is the immense patience which it has shown in the face of the difficult tasks of this astonishing campaign. Italians usually are regarded as temperamental creatures, but "dogged" has been the word which has meant most in this campaign.

Some of the movements of troops across exposed snow-covered spaces have been marvels of incredible patience. To escape observation the soldiers have been clad in white clothing, but in addition to this it has been necessary for them to lie flat upon their faces in the snow, moving very, very slowly, accomplishing their transfers from point to point literally at snail speed.

With regard to such work, as with regard to the Italian wounded, one thing is remarked by all the officers and those who have been privileged even for a short time to share the hardships of the Italian "common soldier." He never complains. Healthy or hurt, weary or fresh, he takes war with a smile full of flashing teeth and with eyes glittering with interest and good nature.



CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN AND THE WAR.

SHE HAS WON "HER PLACE IN THE SUN"—RICH AND POOR IN THE MUNITIONS FACTORIES—NURSE AND AMBULANCE DRIVER—KHAKI AND TROUSERS—ORGANIZER AND FARMER—HEROES IN THE STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES—DOING MEN'S WORK FOR MEN—EVEN A "BOBBIE."

If it were ever really necessary for woman to "win a place in the sun" she has done so by her activities with relation to the war. We have regarded woman with a high degree of sentimentality, and to her pleas for recognition in world affairs have shrugged our shoulders and intimated that she was fit to bear children, nurse the sick, do household chores and cook, cook, cook; but physically, mentally and by training she was unfit to perform the greater world duties.

But the world war has proved that all the tasks which men claimed women were unfitted to perform can as well be done by what we have been pleased to term the "weaker sex."

The war has proved a truism that old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," and also that the burden of war falls upon women. It is they who give up their sons to their country and send their husbands and boys to the front to serve as fodder for the cannon.

In England the work of women in the war secured for them a degree of recognition in Parliament which all of their agitation and militant tactics failed to produce.

National extremity was woman's opportunity; frank invitation to new lines of work was followed by hearty appreciation on the part of the men; and a proposition to extend suffrage to 6,000,000 English women was based avowedly upon the general gratitude felt for their loyal and effective service in the war. And it is war service, for modern warfare has greatly enlarged the content of that term. In the modern conception those who make munitions or in other ways release others for the front are doing war service as truly as those who bear arms.

Instead of yielding to fame a few isolated Mollie Pitchers, the war brought a largely neglected half of the nation's military strength into practical service. Indeed, though woman dreads war more than man does, if it comes to actual defense of land and home and young, we find, with Kipling, that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

THE WORK OF WOMEN.

The work of the women in the munitions factories in England has deservedly attracted large attention, and, doubtless, British historians will for centuries tell how, when England found herself utterly at a loss before her enemies because of a lack of effective ammunition, the women responded "as one man" to meet the need and save the Union Jack from being forced to the shore. It was a repetition, multiplied 10,000 times, of the Presbyterian parson at Springfield, N.J., supplying Washington's army with Watts hymn books when it was retreating to serve as paper wadding for the rifles.

The innovation of the task, the large scale on which it was carried out and the striking success of it make it a major event of the war, even to be compared with the battle of the Marne. And shall not American historians ascribe to the scores of young girls who lost their lives in an explosion at Eddystone, Pa., making munitions, the honor of being the first martyrs of the German-American War?

It was not alone the working girls of England who tired their arms and calloused their hands on the heavy shells. When the work was at its full capacity, a proposition was sent to the women of leisure to undergo three weeks of training in a munitions factory and then take up the work at the week-ends to relieve the regular workers, the women shell machinists, whose strength and skill could best be maintained by saving them from Saturday and Sunday overtime.

There was a strange incongruity in paying them less than the men for the same work. They worked in eight-hour shifts and were required to stand, except during a single half-hour interval. The prospectus of instruction suggested short skirts, thick gloves and boots with low heels, adding that evening dress would not be necessary.

Hotel accommodations were attempted for these "lady" workers, but this proved inadequate, and part of them went to the lodgings with the regular workers. Short skirts were only the first step that promptly led to overalls, and when these English ladies, whom the girls called "Miaows," got well grimed with dust and grease, utterly tired out with handling 12-pound shells and hungry enough to prefer coarse food, they understood the workgirls as never before, and the men, too, and they had a new birth of patriotism. One lady said she found great relief and enthusiasm by thinking of the shells as so many dead Boches or live Tommies.

VARIED OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN.

Making ammunition and hospital supplies, handling luggage and trunks in baggage rooms, driving motors, conducting trolley cars, carpentry work on wooden houses for the front, are but a few of the occupations in which European women engaged in war service. They have served as lift attendants, ticket sellers, post office sorters, mail carriers, gardeners, dairy lassies, grocery clerks, drivers of delivery wagons and vans, commissionaires. More than a million were added to the industrial workers in England during the first two years of war.

America coming later into the war, its women naturally followed the lead of the English and French along many lines tried and proved to be worth while, but our matrons and maids, famed for their independence and initiative, developed also new lines of patriotic effort. As soon as it was evident that German ambitions included designs upon America, the strong feminine instinct for preservation began to assert itself. Pacifism had no special appeal to the gentler sex at such a time. She got behind the recruiting as if it were her own job, and much of the success of it was due to her efforts.

The Woman's Section of the Navy League may well be described by quoting from its own statement of motive and purpose. "Every mother with sons, every wife with husband, every sister with a brother, feels her heart stand still with the horror of what war may bring to her."

WOMAN'S MANY SERVICES.

These women spread information to arouse interest in the condition of the United States naval forces, aided recruiting for the Naval Reserve, assisted in procuring enrollments for the Naval Coast Reserve, and drawing on their resources provided many needed articles of clothing, equipment and comfort not furnished by the Government. A knitting committee makes sleeveless jackets, helmets, wristlets and mufflers. Comfort kits, games, blankets, underwear, rubber hats, coats and boots are made or bought by the Comfort and Supplies Committee.

The two poles of patriotic service are the production of food and fighting at the front; a world of activity bulges between them. European women are accustomed to farm labor. Millions of peasant women, serfs, all but in name, under the late Russian regime; Balkan women, German and French wives and girls, and, to some extent, the mothers and daughters of the English poor, would have understood Markham's poem better if he had called it, "The Woman With the Hoe."

In the war food crisis the women of America matched the women of the enemy and vied with those of their own allies in persuading mother earth to yield her bounty. In heavy shoes, trousers of jean, rolled-up sleeves and a straw hat, the girls of America here and there turned to the land and took hold of the tasks of the farm.

So far we have mentioned only the work at home that women took up for the war, but this is only a part; the other pole finds them near. The invaluable service of Red Cross nurses, their zeal and sacrifice and sometimes martyrdom, from Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale to Edith Cavell, have been women's glory for more than half a century. This war multiplied the need many times and veritable regiments of them responded. Their emblem became the symbol universal of mercy, charity and good will.

In addition to the 50 trained nurses for a base hospital, there are 25 hospital aids, who serve without pay. America has 8000 registered Red Cross nurses and scores of thousands are in training for aids.

The effective and helpful work of women in all lines of endeavor, aside from home and family life, has never before been shown so impressively as now. Their energy, willingness, faithfulness and capability in every activity are unsurpassed.

WOMAN BENT ON DOING HER UTMOST.

But woman shares the lot of mankind on earth, and in the issues of life and death, land and home, she fears to do less than her most, and we would fear to have her do less.

The woman for ages has been the war nurse, but the American woman has gone a step further and qualified as the war physician. When the war clouds first hovered over America more than 200 women physicians formally offered their services to the Government. At the graduation exercises of a women's medical college, when America first entered the war, a prominent official made the statement that 3,000 women physicians could find unlimited work of mercy behind the first line of firing in Europe.

The surgeon general of the United States army did not await an actual call to arms to notify a physician that the proffer of the services of women physicians would be accepted when the need came.

"When I spoke to the women," said this physician, "I asked them this question:

"'Can I tell the Government that it may count upon each and all of you for any work within your power?'

"Their answer was unanimous. It was 'Yes.'"

There is a law prohibiting women from going aboard battleships when they are under way, but such an obstacle has not stood in the way of woman's desire to help where she can when her country calls, and so Miss Loretta Walsh became a member of the United States navy—the first woman enlisted in that branch of the service, with the exception of the nurses' corps. Her title was chief yeoman.

Women announced their readiness to assist in another way—in economizing—one organization having adopted the following resolutions:

RESOLUTION ON ECONOMICS.

"Resolved, That all patriotic women be urged to use their influence on fashions in dress to keep them as economical as possible, and to register their disapproval of such styles as the melon and peg-top skirt, or any other styles that imply extravagant changes in the wardrobe, to the end that the time and money thus saved from clothes may be devoted to the needs of the nation."

How often have we heard: "When war comes, when our homes are threatened, when peril stalks abroad in the land, who shoulders the musket and goes out to fight? The man! The man!"

But woman, knowing better than man the impulses of her own heart, only awaited the opportunity to show what she could do, though, much more than man, she loves peace, detests strife. But she did not await an actual call to arms to show the patriotic spirit with which her soul was fired. Whatever her Government was willing she should do, to that was she prepared to give her best efforts.

Lady Frances Balfour, president of the London Society of National Union of Women Suffragists and president of the Travelers' Aid Society, worked as hard to win the war as any Tommy in the trenches.

A daughter of the eighth Duke of Argyll and the widow of a soldier, she played an important part in Scotch and English public life for many years, and has done much to advance the cause of British women.

An authentic view of the situation as it developed with reference to the reception of women into the everyday work and what American women might do is contained in the following interview with Lady Balfour:

WOMAN AS WAGE EARNER.

"We are doing everything," she said. "We are filling nearly every post. If the House of Lords had not vetoed the bill we would be solicitors, but that must wait for a time. British women are now meeting with success because for the first time they are receiving a proper wage and are able to live in a way to do their best work. The old sweat shop wage has gone, and I hope never to return. Women will never return to the conditions which existed before the war.

"American women start with a great advantage. They have already the entree in the business world and fill many clerical places, whereas our women and girls had to break down the barriers of conservatism existing in a great number of banks. There was the same objection to women workers among the farmers of the South of England, though in Scotland the woman has always done her part on the farm.



"Girls are beginning on the farm at 18 shillings ($4.50) a week; before the war men farm hands worked for 11 shillings ($2.75). Our women are milking cows, running steam plows, digging in the fields and giving complete satisfaction. I dare not venture to predict what will happen in the future, but we can face it with confidence, I am certain. Now we are inspired with the spirit of patriotism; we feel we owe our best to our country; we are ready to suffer hardship just as our brave men are doing in the trenches.

BRITISH WOMEN'S PATRIOTISM.

"The patriotism of British women had stood a hard test; I hope American women have an easier trial. Lloyd George says he hopes America will profit by the mistakes of Britain. For more than a year the government of this country snubbed and discouraged our women. The government does not pay women at the same rate as men; it does not give them the same war bonus. There came a time when the government realized the war could not be won without the women. Then it issued frantic calls for help, and the women responded nobly, just as they would have done months before. I hope your American Government will recognize the value of woman's help from the very start.

"Unfortunately I must judge your women largely by those who come over here for the season in peace days. As I remember they spent a great deal of time and money at the hairdressers, manicures, dressmaking establishments and hotels. But I am certain the great majority of Americans care more for their homes and country and less for display. I feel that they should concentrate on the production of food. We need all we can get and then we shall not have as much as we require. Money, food and ships are the things most needed.

"Your women have been wonderfully generous in giving us money, supporting hospitals and sending us supplies. We can use some of your nurses and women doctors. We have a hospital here in London holding nearly 1000 soldiers and it is run entirely by women. Our Scottish women's hospitals have done grand work in the various theaters of war. Not only the nurses, but the doctors and ambulance drivers are women. We have supplied about 72,000 women for this work alone."

"How have women regarded the discipline of army life?" was asked.

"Wonderfully!" said Lady Frances. "It has been good for them. Just see our women 'bus conductors. They work hard, handle all kinds of people, but I never heard them say they are unable to meet the emergencies which arise. And for the most part they are women who come from very humble surroundings. You hear that women have broken down in health under their work, but it seems to me I have read frequently about American business men suffering from nervous breakdowns and overwork."

SUCCESS BUILT ON RUINS OF FAILURE.

No great victories, either in war or in the ordinary relations of life, are attained without initial blunders. Many a splendid success is built upon the ruins of failure, and this is a fact that the women of Europe learned after the first hysteria occasioned by the marching soldiers, the beat of drums and all the excitement incident to real warfare. American women, when they joined hands with the Allies against Prussianism and all that it meant, builded splendid records of their usefulness upon the mistakes that these women made.

In the summer of 1914 every girl and woman clamored to be a nurse. Women with a great deal of money and no experience opened "hospitals" that were about as fit for the reception and treatment of wounded men as a henroost is capable of housing an eagle. They all wanted to be in the "Red Cross" or "V.A.D." (Voluntary Aid Department) and wear caps and bandage wounds.

Then there were the amateur nurses who didn't know much about nursing, "but would love to try." The daughter of a duke tried to go through a probationary course at St. Bartholomew's Hospital because she thought the uniform "perfectly sweet." But of course this element of "fluffiness" exists on the outside of any great movement. It has to be blown away so that the hard surface of genuine and practical endeavor can be seen and felt. And that is what happened to England. The "fluff" disappeared and women knew where they were, and men realized that women possess a force, a firm and splendid resolve, that gives them the right to step beside men in the march toward victory.

Another craze that amounted to a vice was the furious and ill-considered efforts of totally unskilled women to make shirts and hospital garments for soldiers. If some of the results had not been pathetic one could almost be overcome with the comicality of the whole business. Soldiers' shirts were turned out by a circle of busily sewing ladies that would not fit a dwarf, while probably the next batch of garments dispatched with patriotic fervor to a regimental depot might have been designed for a race of giants.

NATIONAL SERVICE FOR WOMEN.

National service for women as well as for men proved a very substantial portion of Great Britain's strength, but before national service had been generally thought of an organization called the Women's Service Bureau had been formed by a group of influential and intelligent women who were imbued with the idea that only by careful and systematized registration and selection could the matter of feminine war work be successfully arranged.

Lady Frances Balfour was the first president of the Women's Service Bureau, which with the London Society for Suffrage established 62 branches in the city of London and its suburbs.

What the women at the head of this society realized was the necessity for giving the right women the most suitable employment and also to give every applicant for work helpful and practical advice. The need for women's labor in the many trades and professions hitherto closed to them, and for their increased co-operation in those in which they already took part, has been forced home even to unwilling minds.

Here and there on the battlefields of Europe—in Bulgaria, Servia, Roumania, France, Belgium and Russia—have been noted occasionally the presence of a woman warrior, a modern Joan of Arc. It was not expected, however, that in America woman would do more than perform the service work which fell to the lot of the Red Cross nurses and the women practicing conservation and effecting organization in England.

But the women of America were not satisfied with "petticoat preparedness." They rushed to the khaki suits and to the colors with unexpected enthusiasm. One khaki-clad woman walked from San Francisco to New York, making recruiting speeches on the way.

The infantry, the cavalry, the navy, the marines could all point to their girls in khaki.

ALL KINDS OF WOMEN ENLISTED.

As the women enlisted for all kinds of service, so it may be said all kinds of women enlisted—that is, women of all ranks of life—some from society, some from the mills, others from the offices, the shops, the stage, the restaurants and the colleges.

Many years ago the country rang with the name of Tippecanoe, and one of the men who bore arms on the western frontier was William Henry Harrison. The years went by and Benjamin Harrison came to the White House as President.

The Harrison blood showed in the preparedness work, and Old Tippecanoe's great granddaughter helped to make the women of the country fit for the burden of war.

There isn't anything on earth that shows so strongly in the blood as the soldier element, and Elizabeth Harrison, whose great ancestor faced the perils of the frontier warfare, was a leader by force of her inherited ability as a leader. She was elected drill sergeant for the college girls of the New York University.

When the war clouds came she was following inherited bent. All of the Harrison men had been among the country's greatest lawyers and Miss Harrison was studying for the bar.

But just as the warwhoop of the West called Tippecanoe from his books and briefs to bullets and battles, so the daughter of the former President dropped Blackstone and Kent to take up the Drill Regulations and the elementary text books of the army.

She knew that the way to make women fit for their part of war service was to make them strong and healthy and to give them an idea of the things that men-at-arms have to do.

NOTED WOMEN IN THE WORK.

So Miss Harrison was one of the first workers in the movement to teach women the elements of war. Many women of importance in the social and financial world took up the task with a will, and there was a girl for every signal flag, a maid for every wireless station, and an angel for every hospital ward in the making as the men pursued the task of providing guns and the men behind the guns.

Miss Harrison and the girls she drilled at the University wore regulation field service uniform, khaki breeches, coat, heavy shoes and puttees, and a large hat of military cut.

The American Woman's League for Self-Defence and Preparedness was the first woman's military organization in America, according to its president, Mrs. Ida Powell Priest, who is descended from an old Long Island family, Thomas Powell being one of her ancestors.

The first cavalry troop, of which Ethel M. Scheiss was first senior captain, drilled regularly. Their first appearance mounted caused a mild sensation on Broadway. They were most impressively stern soldierettes as they trotted and galloped their horses.

Everywhere the girl in America strove with helpful earnestness to do "her bit." Every strata of society called out its members in a wonderful plan of feminine preparedness. Besides the thousands of women members of the Red Cross some of the most prominent organizations officered and planned by women include The National League for Women's Service, which has branches in every large city in the United States. They enrolled women as motor car drivers, telegraphers, wireless operators, agriculturists and skilled mechanics.

Miss Anne Morgan, as head of this organization, devoted an enormous amount of energy to the success of the work.

OTHER SOCIETIES ORGANIZED.

Other societies organized were the National Special Aid Society, Service of Any Kind, Militia of Mercy, which sends and provides bandages and other necessities and comforts for the soldiers; Girl Scouts of America, first aid, signalling and drills; Daughters of the American Revolution; the Suffrage Party and the Anti-Suffrage Society; the International Child Welfare League and the Girls' National Honor Guard. The Federation of Women's Clubs all over the United States also organized for any patriotic service that women could perform.

A practical way of doing something to help France and Servia was offered early in the war by the splendid initiative of Dr. Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, who organized hospitals for the wounded, the staffs of which were all women, and called on other societies for their support.

The London society responded first by subscriptions from individual members, then by giving beds, then (in February, 1915) by offering itself as London agent for the hospitals and undertaking all the practical work, in the sending out of personnel and equipment, which had to be transacted in London.

It is only by carefully systematized organization that great work of this kind can be carried on. The slapdash, haphazard of hysterical excitement can have no legitimate place in a movement that provides stepping stones toward the salvation of the civilized world.

One of the things which will live long in the history of womankind was the wonderful work done by the magnificently courageous units of Lady Paget's nursing force, which went out to Servia, when that country was laid waste not only by the German beasts, but also by disease.

It was not the fault of those brave women and men that things happened at Uskub and in other Servian towns that do not bear repeating.

It was just the lack of thorough preparedness for a war which was much worse than humanity had thought possible that deepened the tragedy of their situation. In Servia, in fact, the career of the hospitals was quite checkered and the service rendered proportionately more vital.

LONDON-WALES UNIT.

At the time of the Austro-German invasion in the autumn of 1915, the London-Wales Unit was at Valjevo, one of the five Scottish women's hospitals working in the country. It was under the command of Dr. Alice Hutchinson and was very highly organized. Doctor Inglis had herself gone on to Servia to take general charge of the hospitals there in the spring of 1915. From the time that a typhus epidemic was overcome by women doctors early in the year to the time of the invasion all seemed to be going well. Then came three weeks of great pressure of work and of rapid moves from place to place as the enemy advanced into the country. Finally, it became a necessity for the personnel of the different units either to retreat with the Servian army over the mountains into Montenegro or to fall in the hands of the enemy.

The story of the retreat is now very generally known. The journey was one long series of forced marches. Mountains 7000 feet high had to be traversed in blinding snow, almost the whole journey had to be made on foot and it was six weeks before the little band reached the coast. Doctor Inglis meanwhile, with her group of nurses and orderlies, and Doctor Hutchinson, with the London-Wales Unit, had gallantly stayed behind and continued to attend to their Servian wounded and to organize help for them till the work was forcibly stopped by the advancing Austrian army.

UNIT TAKEN PRISONERS.

After being ordered out of Valjevo, Doctor Hutchinson made several attempts to organize hospitals in the line of retreat. She was at Vrnyachka Banja when the Austrians entered the town on November 10, 1915. She and her unit were taken prisoners and interned, first near the Servian frontier and then in Hungary for three weary months. The cheerful courage with which the members of the unit bore hardship and uncertainty and hope deferred has been related by Doctor Hutchinson in a memorable narrative. Their conditions would have been still more intolerable and their release would have been still longer delayed if Doctor Hutchinson herself had not known a great deal more about the Geneva Convention than the Austrian authorities had ever dreamed. She was thus able to assert herself on behalf of those under her in a way which taught her captors something new about British women. At the beginning of February the unit was at last allowed to cross the frontier into Switzerland. It reached England on February 12. It was only the perfection of its organization that carried this brave body of women through amazing hardships.

Abroad women chauffeurs became almost as common in the war as men; the public in Paris and London refused to regard the appearance of a woman on the streets in cap, "knickers" and puttees or heavy boots as unusual, and in need they in many instances not only drove "taxi," but guided ambulances in the hospital service.

The Red Cross in America, in the matter of preparedness, organized a class for women chauffeurs. One of these, started in Philadelphia, had among its instructors Mrs. Thomas Langdon Elwyn and Miss Letitia McKim, both of whom drove ambulances for the Allies in England.

The National League for Woman Service, working in conjunction with the Council of National Defense, canvassed the country through its Bureau of Registration and Information to provide statistics for mobilizing the entire woman-force of the Nation; all of which was done with the approval of the Secretary of Labor.

Perhaps the outstanding incident of industrial employment among women was that of several women in France as locomotive engineers. It is true that they operated only the shunting engines about the yards at the military camps, but it was noted in dispatches in every quarter of the globe that Mesdames Louis Debris and Marie Viard, whose husbands were killed in the war, were piloting the engines which their husbands had formerly driven.

WOMAN'S INGENUITY.

And woman has proved her ingenuity. In the damp trenches of the battlefields abroad the men need protection from the dampness and cold, which ordinary clothing will not provide. It was found that the leather-lined huntsmen's coats, and the sort of garments worn by the chauffeur, the aviator and the mountaineer served the men in the trenches well, and particularly along the Russian frontier and in the cold mountainous regions.

But the price of leather soared, with the demand for millions of pairs of shoes, saddles, harness, headgear, and whatnot, and leather-lined coats were at a premium. The women were not to be denied, and through the Suffrage organizations which turned in to prepare America for the struggle and to render assistance to the Allies, the unique plan was adopted of making linings for the airmen and soldier's coats of old kid gloves.

One group of women in a single section of Philadelphia gathered a thousand pairs of old gloves in a canvass. The seams were ripped and the gloves cut down one side and laid open. The fingers of one glove so treated were dovetailed between the fingers of another glove so cut, and stitched together. Thus one glove was sewed to another until a section of leather was formed sufficient to make a lining for a coat. And many such were devised and incorporated in the garments sent to the front by the various agencies dominated by the women of the land.

WOMEN AS POLICEMEN.

While women to a limited degree were rendering service as "policemen" in certain sections of the United States and on Continental Europe the war was responsible for the development of an organized force in London, which will probably remain a permanent organization to the end of time. Miss Darner Dawson is chief of the London woman "bobbies," and M.S. Allen is chief superintendent.

The force was organized in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the war and has relieved the men of a large amount of responsibility. The force is uniformed, the women wearing military costumes with visored caps. They operate under the supervision, or with the authority of Sir Edward Henry, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, and serve for duty at the munition plants where women workers are employed, besides doing regular patrol duty and welfare work.

The service in London is in the nature of a training for special service and the women after sufficient experience are sent to suburbs and small towns to do police duty. They are highly spoken of and declared to be very efficient, rendering service in the barrooms and looking after women in a manner that the regular "bobbies" cannot approximate.

It was declared in England, by way of closing the comment on this phase of the war that no one thing so stimulated the enlistments for service as the execution of Miss Edith Cavell, the English nurse who was shot as a spy by Germany. That her name will go down in history as a martyr to the cause of liberty and humanity goes without saying.

Miss Cavell had been a nurse in Brussels, and after the occupation of the Belgian capital by the Germans, she remained where she used her private hospital for the nursing of wounded soldiers; not excluding the Germans. It had been intimated that she had better cross the border, but she insisted on remaining at her post. Ultimately she was accused of being one of the instigators of a plot to smuggle English, French and Belgian soldiers across the lines, and of serving the enemies of Germany.

To the German mind she was more than a spy; Her conduct was reprehensible, because in the capacity of nurse she had won a degree of confidence. She was therefore held as a spy and traitor. And though Brand Whitlock, America's Minister to Belgium, and other diplomats sought to save her, she was shot by the ruthless Germans.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE TERRIBLE PRICE.

A NATION OF MEN DESTROYED—MILLIONS IN SHIPPING AND COMMERCE DESTROYED—WORLD'S MAPS CHANGED—BILLIONS IN MONEY—IMMENSE DEBTS—NATION'S WEALTH—THE UNITED STATES A GREAT PROVIDER.

The human tongue seems almost devoid of power to convey to the human mind what the war has actually cost the world in lives, money, property, ideals and all that is dear to humanity. In all the world there is not a human being who has not contributed something to the awful cost and the loss due to the destruction of property, the stopping of industry, the waste of energy and the curtailment of human endeavor in the interest of civilization, and the effects which the struggle has had upon the world cannot even be approximated in dollars and cents.

We have been taught to regard war as a terrible thing and to realize that thousands must be slain, but in no war in the history of the world has there been as many troops engaged as have been killed in the European war on the battlefields of Belgium and France.

At the beginning of the year 1917 it was estimated that the total casualties of the war were 22,500,000. In a report based on figures compiled in Washington it was stated: The human estimated waste and financial outlay are staggering. The combined casualties of the war, partly estimated because all belligerents do not publish lists, are 22,500,000. The figures included killed, permanently injured, prisoners and wounded returned to the front. Of this number the Central Powers were estimated to have suffered permanent losses in excess of 4,000,000, and the entente perhaps twice that number, Russia being by far the heaviest loser.

The financial outlay, based in part on official reports and statements and in part on estimates, was placed at approximately $80,000,000,000, divided $50,000,000,000 to the entente and $30,000,000,000 to the Central Powers. The entente lost more than 3,500,000 tons of merchant shipping and approximately 800,000 tons of naval vessels. On the other side the loss of naval tonnage was approximately 250,000 tons, and merchant ships aggregating 211,000 tons were reported captured or destroyed.

IMMENSE LOSS TO COMMERCE.

Of the foreign commerce the Central Powers had lost $10,000,000,000 in the two and a half years of war, including imports and exports. The loss of commerce of Great Britain and her allies with the Central Powers probably was in the neighborhood of $7,000,000. This was largely made up at least on the import side by increased trade with the United States and other neutral countries and enlarged trade with the colonies.

Germany lost virtually all her African colonies and all her possessions in the Pacific Ocean, an aggregate of more than 1,000,000 square miles. Turkey also lost a large area of territory held at the outbreak of the war, while Austria lost most of Bukowina and Galicia. To offset the territory losses of the Central Powers, the entente have lost in Europe approximately 300,000 square miles. Of this large area, all of it thickly populated in normal times, 175,000 square miles were wrested from Russia on the eastern battlefield.

The staggering losses in men include the vast number on both sides wounded in such a way as to permanently cripple them and render them unfit for military service. The figures are based on official reports and estimates by military experts.

Germany's permanent losses were placed at 1,500,000 men, including about 1,000,000 in killed. The permanent losses of Austria-Hungary were placed at about 1,000,000 more than those of Germany, owing to the fact that so much of the hard fighting on the eastern front was in the Austro-Hungarian theater. The losses of the Austro-Hungarians during the drive of General Brusiloff in 1916 were frightful. Large numbers of Austrians were taken prisoner by Brusiloff.

Russia's casualties for the first year of the war were estimated by military experts at more than 3,500,000 men, and these were doubled in the succeeding year, according to estimates by American military experts. Russia returned to the fighting line a smaller percentage of wounded than any of the other great Powers.

GREAT BRITAIN'S CASUALTIES.

Great Britain's casualties were placed in excess of 1,250,000 despite the limited front of British operations in France in the early stages. The aggregate of Italy's casualties was estimated at 1,500,000, while Belgium's were placed at 200,000, Servians at 400,000, Montenegro's at 150,000 and Rumania's at more than 300,000.

While the area of the territorial losses of the Central Powers was nearly four times as great as that of the entente group, with the exception of the occupied portions of Bukowina and Galicia, the value of the territory included in them is comparatively small. For example, Germany's African colonies were sparsely settled, largely by natives, with virtually all development in the future. Despite this fact, their loss was a severe blow to Germany.

The territorial losses of the entente covered all but a small corner of Belgium, a highly developed, thickly populated industrial country; a large slice of northern France, virtually all of Servia, all of Montenegro, more than three-fourths of Rumania and 175,000 square miles of Russia, the major part of it in the grain-growing section.

According to military experts on the "war map" of Europe as it stood at that time, the Central Powers had won the war. But when their enormous loss of foreign commerce and territory is considered, their "victory" was shown to have most decided limitations, especially because of their admission that they eventually would have to give up all occupied territory in view of the frightful cost in men and money.

FIGURES POSITIVELY STAGGERING.

Supplementing these statements, as showing the progress of the war, it was stated just before the United States took its memorable step to break off diplomatic relations with Germany, members of the National War Council estimated the total casualties of the war at that time as in excess of the population of the United Kingdom, which in 1911 was more than 45,000,000. This of course included those maimed, injured or so stricken that they were unfit for future service. The number actually killed was estimated at more than 7,000,000.

Staggering as these figures are they are easily conceivable when it is remembered that the German front lines covered more than 500 miles with Allied troops opposing them, and that in a single battle millions of shells were fired by one side or the other. In one battle it was officially reported that 4,000,000 shot and shell were used, and in another the English mined the German trenches for a distance of several miles and blew out the strongholds, using more than 1,000,000 pounds of high explosives.