Switzerland has always been a sort of sanctuary for refugees, principally political, and now, especially, she is full of all kinds of strangers. In the first days of the war there were streams of Italians, suddenly thrown out of work in Germany and Austria and packed off home, who passed through Switzerland in every stage of want and despair. Every big town organized its soup kitchens at the railway station; women of the best families took the matter in hand, and so the huddling, apprehensive columns were passed from one town to another, fed, clothed, and comforted, finally landing in their own country, safe and sound. An enthusiastic letter of thanks has been published in the papers, emanating from these grateful "Chinks," (Swiss for "Dago,") and ending up with "Eviva la Svizzera!" ("Long live Switzerland!")

Germany began to clean out the Russians on the first day of the war. Hordes of them poured into our country with fistfuls of ruble notes that no one would take, and with a growing hunger that they could not appease. A doctor was called to visit a band of twelve that were herded together in two rooms of a cheap hotel here. He expected to find emigrants; instead, they were people of the highest refinement. Their story was pitiful. They had been inmates of a private sanatorium in Germany and were summarily dismissed at the outbreak of the war. Separated from their trunks, ill and weak, and too confused to think clearly, they arrived in Berne with nothing but their piles of ruble notes, that no one would take, and the fear of death in their hearts.

They were quartered in the hotel by the committee, and the physician was called. One woman of the party begged him to take a ring, worth many hundred dollars, and give her $10 for it, so that she might buy some comforts for herself and daughter. Of course, the whole party was immediately removed to a private sanatorium, where its members were cared for, and where, little by little, they recovered their calm and gathered up their scattered wits.

Very far from calm is a Swiss who has just returned from captivity in the interior of Morocco on account of being mistaken for a German. The day of the declaration of war the French authorities ordered him out of his beautiful Moroccan home, giving him forty-eight hours to pack up. His wife was visiting her mother here in Berne, and one can fancy her state of mind on receiving a telegram to the effect that her husband and babies, twins of 7 and a little fellow of a year and a half, were ordered off, with the nurse, to parts unknown, as political prisoners. In vain the man protested he was Swiss. His name was German, and he was in a German firm; therefore he was a "canaille d'allemand"; so off they went. At first they were packed on a little steamer whose capacity was thirty people—there were 150 of them, and they cruised along the Mediterranean for a night and a day.

At last they lay before Casa Blanca, and, on asking why they were not landed, received the reply that the authorities must first of all clear the pier, as the boatload of refugees landed there the day before had been received with showers of stones and vile epithets from the mob, whose hate of the Germans knew no bounds. When they finally landed they were quartered in a riding school with 150 others, where they all slept on the tanbark. They had coffee for breakfast, and during the three days they were there had a thick soup each day for dinner, and nothing more. One day it was bean soup, one day peas, and the third day lentils. They were finally transported to the interior of Morocco and assigned to the barracks of the Foreign Legion, the members of which are now fighting in France, and here they passed strange, uncomfortable, heart-breaking days.

Finally, when summoned to deliver up his money, the man said: "I shall telegraph this outrage to Berne."

"What, are you Swiss?" was the officer's surprised question.

"Yes."

"Well, keep your money," said the officer; and a few days later Mr. X., through the efforts of our State Department and our Minister to France, was released and joined his wife in Switzerland. This story was told me by the agonized grandmother, whose tears flowed fast at the thought of the hardships to which her daughter's babies had been exposed.

And now come the Belgian refugees to us, a most pitiable band. French Switzerland has the honor of beginning the movement which has made possible the bringing to Switzerland and placing in hundreds of households these innocent victims of this hideous war. In addition, subscriptions have been opened in various papers, and thousands of francs have been gathered and sent to this most unfortunate of nations. The movement to receive Belgian refugees is gaining ground, too, in German-speaking Switzerland, though here the sympathy for Germany stands somewhat in the way of a full and open hospitality. Some papers write:

"Let the Belgians stay in their country. The Germans will take care of them. Let those that have fled return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations. In this way the misery of the country—which is certainly not entirely the fault of Germany (a hit at England)—will be alleviated. Furthermore, Switzerland's harboring of Belgian refugees is a demonstration against Germany. Let Switzerland beware of doing anything to prejudice her neutrality. Finally, there are in our own country plenty of miserable poor people to exercise our charity upon, and every one knows that charity begins at home."

Articles have appeared in the German papers expressing surprise at Switzerland's hospitality, and to all of these carpers, at home and abroad, these people who have acted out of the purest motives of charity and love for their neighbor, answer somewhat as follows:

The Belgians that have come to take refuge in Switzerland wished nothing better than to stay in their own land. They were driven out in hordes, at the point of the sword, by the Germans. It would be hard to convince them that they ought to go back and that the Germans will take care of them. Some of these miserable beings did return, hoping to pick up their life again after the great shock. They found their village a heap of stones, their business ruined. How could they, therefore, "return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations"? If Switzerland's charitable impulse is to be construed as a demonstration against Germany, then must Switzerland reflect that any excuse will do, and that her neutrality has the same validity in Germany's eyes as had Belgium's. No country, thinking and acting objectively, could find in this movement anything to "prejudice Switzerland's neutrality."

As for charity beginning at home, one might add that it does not end there. It would be hard to find a country whose charitable organizations are so all-embracing as here. In times of peace there are committees who sew for and otherwise look after every kind of human misery. There are the tuberculous poor, the girl-mothers, the creches, the new-born babies, the soup kitchens, the visiting trained nurses, the clinics, the blind, the vicious, the vacation colonies, the swimming lessons, the gymnastics, the tramps and their woodyard, &c., and every organization has its Christmas tree, with distribution of presents when the season of rejoicing comes around. Now that the war is here, and every available man is standing at the frontier guarding his Fatherland from invasion, the soldiers have been added to the list of charities, and none of the old has been stricken off.

In addition to babies' socks, every one has time to knit a pair of soldiers' socks, and in every dainty work basket, lying next to neglected fancy work, there are sure to be some half-finished warm woolen gloves or wristlets or knee warmers for the boys at the frontier. If Switzerland can keep up her home charities and look out so splendidly for her soldiers at the same time, and still have the means and the will to welcome and care for the poor and unhappy of a sister folk whose fate might very well have been her own, it is surely not a subject for adverse criticism, but, on the contrary, for encouragement. And who was it who said: "For as much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me"?



Once Fair Belgrade Is a Skeleton City

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

LONDON, Jan. 11.—Z.D. Ferriman, special correspondent of The Daily Chronicle with the Servian Army and the first English journalist to enter Belgrade since the Austrian occupation, sends a long dispatch describing the Servians' re-entry into their capital, in the course of which he says:

"On the first view Belgrade does not seem to have suffered to any great extent from the bombardment. Walking up the broad thoroughfare of the Rasia, you arrive nearly at the top before you see a house with the upper story blown away and with a fragment of what appears to have been the roof—an imminent peril to passers-by.

"But appearances are specious. Many buildings whose facades are intact are skeletons. Projectiles with high trajectory have fallen through the roof and wrought destruction within. This is the case with a wing of the Royal Palace. The windows are shattered, but the masonry has not suffered. Within, however, all is devastated. Among the public buildings the museum is a shapeless heap of debris, and the university is so much knocked about that the plainest and cheapest remedy will be an entirely new edifice.

"The higher part of the city has suffered most, with the exception, perhaps, of the district around the station, which is completely battered down. Rents in the pavement show that shells charged with very high explosives were employed. One huge gulf I noticed at least twelve feet deep by fifteen long and eight wide.

"There are many instances of the vagaries of these missiles of destruction. I visited a house in which M. Nikovitz, who accompanied me in my peregrinations, had occupied an apartment. There was nothing the matter with the front, but a neat hole in the side marked the passage of a projectile which had traversed the building and exploded in the adjoining house, now a mound of brick-bats and matchwood. One half of a large establishment in Prince Michael Street was completely wrecked, but the other half was undamaged, and rolls of textile fabrics were in order on their shelves or piled on counters. The best shops are in this street, and much havoc has been wrought.

"I picked up spherical shrapnel bullets on several premises. Shrapnel has no battering force. Its object is to kill or disable men. It can do no harm to walls. Its employment in this instance was a wanton act intended to inspire terror and doubtless augmented the loss of life among the citizens.

"The principal hotel, the Moskwa, situated at the highest part of the town, has been devastated partially within, but the framework of the building is intact. On the other side of the street a row of houses far less conspicuous has been demolished. In one street we met a little girl of 12 coming out of a house opposite to one which was a heap of ruins. We asked her if she had seen it destroyed. She said she had and was very frightened. Shortly afterward a shell fell in their own garden; then they ran away and took refuge with friends at the other end of the town. An old woman had a stall containing tins of shoe polish and other trifles. A jumble of charred wood and twisted iron behind had been her shop. The caretaker at the house occupied by M. Nikovitz, a cheerful old dame, told us how she had hid herself at the other end of the long garden, but it was terrible.

"We asked some urchins, who would be at school in normal times, but whose occupation and delight are now to hold officers' horses, if they were not frightened. 'At first,' they replied, 'but not afterward. They make a great noise, but they never catch us, and we do not mind them—the shells.' A boy of 12, who was carrying on his father's hair-dressing business single-handed during the latter's absence on service, expressed a similar opinion.

"I am told that about 3,000 people remained, out of the normal population of 100,000, during the bombardment. I cannot ascertain the number of killed and injured, but it certainly runs into the hundreds. Those of the inhabitants who left the city but remained in the neighborhood returned after the bombardment and were here during the eleven days of the Austrian occupation.

"The practice of taking hostages, which it has been reserved for this twentieth century civilized war to revive, was resorted to at Belgrade. I am assured on unimpeachable authority, supported by accounts of several eyewitnesses, that not fewer than 1,000 persons were carried off to Austria. Among them were boys of 15 and 16. Nor were foreign residents immune. M. Bissers, the Belgian Consul, who is also a Director of the electric tram and light company, was of the number. He was handcuffed like a common criminal. Neither the fate nor whereabouts of these civilian prisoners of war is known.

"The plate-glass fronts of many shops in the principal thoroughfares are smashed, and the interiors present a picture of desolation, overturned cash registers and objects that have not been stolen lying broken and scattered on the floor, but the majority of the establishments that have been ransacked do not show outward signs of it. The system seems to have been to obtain ingress from the back.

"In the Rasia there is a stately mansion. Its owner, M. Kersmanovitz, died a short time ago, leaving large sums for charitable purposes. The house was occupied by his widow when the war broke out. Chalked on the door were names distinguished in the Austro-Hungarian peerage—Baron Zichy, Graf Festetics, and Graf Vanderstraten, all Lieutenants on the staff, who had been its denizens during occupation. Though their tenure was brief they had made the most of their time. The place was gutted, carpets torn up, tapestry torn down, and pictures destroyed. It was also indescribably filthy. This may have been the work of the soldiery after the departure of the young noblemen.

"The poor suffered equally with the rich. A humble restaurant used by the working classes, one of two or three still open, was despoiled of its linen and cutlery. Small shops had been sacked as well as the larger establishments. It was all fish that came to the Austrian net. I have not yet met any one whose dwelling escaped. The Russian Legation is wrecked.

"The Royal Palace was thrown open to the people. 'It is yours,' said the Austrian liberators in the generosity of their hearts; but they had gone over it with care first."



Letters and Diaries

A Group of Soldiers' Letters

A German cavalry division was pursuing a division of English infantry. The English ranks were suddenly reinforced; they turned and charged the Germans, who fled in disorder.

All the Germans fled—but one. Says an English soldier, Trooper S. Cargill:

When they saw us coming they turned and fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was half mad with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes, and we saw that the poor devil was dead.

That ghastly vision of the mounted corpse can find no place in histories of this war. It has no historical significance even if it did receive a place in the cable dispatches from the front. Only from the lips of soldiers or from their pens when they snatch a few moments from the business of war to write to their people at home come such naively graphic accounts of trivial but illuminative incidents.

In many an American family is treasured a packet of yellow papers, on which are written, in ink fast fading away, brief and intimate impressions of the civil war by men who waged it. Every war has thus its unknown, unhonored chroniclers, who send to their little home circles narratives that for startling realism no highly paid special correspondent could surpass.

Trooper Cargill's letter is one of a number contained in an extraordinary volume just published by the George H. Doran Company of New York, with the title "In the Firing Line," (50 cents net.) Mr. A. St. John Adcock collected a large number of letters sent home during the last few weeks by English soldiers fighting in France and has arranged them to form what is perhaps the most essentially human account of the great war that has yet appeared.

Consider, for instance, the narrative of Private Whitaker of the Coldstream Guards. He fought through the terrific four-day battle near Mons, and his account of it follows. It must be remembered that the British troops who took part in that battle had sailed from Southampton only four days before:

You thought it was a big crowd that streamed out of the Crystal Palace when we went to see the Cup Final. Well, outside Compiegne it was just as if that crowd came at us. You couldn't miss them. Our bullets plowed into them, but still they came for us. I was well intrenched, and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I should have enough bullets when a pal shouted, "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" The next second he was rolled over with a nasty knock on the shoulder. He jumped up and hissed, "Let me get at them!" His language was a bit stronger than that.

When we really did get the order to get at them we made no mistake, I can tell you. They cringed at the bayonet, but those on our left wing tried to get around us, and after racing as hard as we could for quite five hundred yards we cut up nearly every man who did not run away.

You have read of the charge of the Light Brigade. It was new to our cavalry chaps. I saw two of our fellows who were unhorsed stand back to back and slash away with their swords, bringing down nine or ten of the panic-stricken devils. Then they got hold of the stirrup-straps of a horse without a rider and got out of the melee. This kind of thing was going on all day.

In the afternoon I thought we should all get bowled over, as they came for us again in their big numbers. Where they came from goodness knows; but as we could not stop them with bullets they had another taste of the bayonet. My Captain, a fine fellow, was near to me, and as he fetched them down he shouted, "Give them socks, my lads!" How many were killed and wounded I don't know; but the field was covered with them.

It is also of the four days' battle that Private J.R. Taft of the Second Essex Regiment wrote. How typical of real life, as distinct from romance, is his ready transition from his devout thanksgiving for his safety to his amused recollection of the popular song that rose above the crash of shot and shell:

We were near Mons when we had the order to intrench. It was just dawn when we were half way down our trenches, and we were on our knees when the Germans opened a murderous fire with their guns and machine guns.

We opened a rapid fire with our Maxims and rifles; we let them have it properly, but no sooner did we have one lot down than up came another lot, and they sent their cavalry to charge us, but we were there with our bayonets, and we emptied our magazines on them. Their men and horses were in a confused heap. There were a lot of wounded horses we had to shoot to end their misery.

We had several charges with their infantry, too. We find they don't like the bayonets. Their rifle shooting is rotten; I don't believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards.

We find their field artillery very good; we don't like their shrapnel; but I noticed that some did not burst; if one shell that came over me had burst. I should have been blown to atoms. I thanked the Lord it did not. I also heard our men singing that famous song, "Get Out and Get Under." I know that for an hour in our trench it would make any one keep under, what with their shells and machine guns. Many poor fellows went to their death like heroes.

The writer of the following letter, too, was telling of Mons. To friends far away, at peaceful Barton-on-Humber, he wrote:

Just a line to tell you I have returned from the front, and I can tell you we have had a very trying time of it. I must also say I am very lucky to be here. We were fighting from Sunday, 23d, to Wednesday evening, on nothing to eat or drink—only the drop of water in our bottles which we carried.

No one knows—only those that have seen us could credit such a sight, and if I live for years may I never see such a sight again. I can tell you it is not very nice to see your chum next to you with half his head blown off. The horrible sights I shall never forget. There seemed nothing else only certain death staring us in the face all the time. I cannot tell you all on paper. We must, however, look on the bright side, for it is no good doing any other.

There are thousands of these Germans, and they simply throw themselves at us. It is no joke fighting seven or eight to one. I can tell you we have lessened them a little, but there are millions more yet to finish.

Of the battle that reddened the foam of the North Sea during the last days of August many a seaman recorded his impressions. And what curious things stuck in the memories of the weary, powder-stained survivors! "The funny thing which you should have seen," wrote Midshipman Hartley to his parents, "was all the stokers grubbing around after the action looking for bits of shell." And a seaman on H.M.S. Hearty wrote:

Two cooks were in the galley of the Arethusa, just having their rum, when a shell killed one and blew the other's arm off. A funny thing, they've got a clock hanging up; it smashed the glass and one hand, but the blooming thing's still going.

There is fine realism in Seaman Gunner Brown's letter to the parents who waited for tidings in their cottage on the Isle of Wight:

We and another ship in our squadron came across two German cruisers. We routed one and started on the second, but battle cruisers soon finished her off. Another then appeared, and after we had plunked two broadsides into her she slid off in flames.

Every man did his bit, and there was a continuous stream of jokes. We penciled on the projectiles, "Love from England," "One for the Kaiser," and other such messages. The sight of sinking German ships was gloriously terrible, funnels and masts lying about in all directions, and amidships a huge furnace, the burning steel looking like a big ball of sulphur. There was not the slightest sign of fear, from the youngest to the oldest man aboard.



But it remained for a naval Lieutenant, whose name is not given, to describe, in a letter to a friend, one of the most remarkable incidents of the war, an incident which might have occurred in the imagination of Jules Verne or of H.G. Wells in his youth. He wrote:

The Defender having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy's cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings—alone in an open boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy's fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a swirl alongside and up, if you please, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine E-4, opens his conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home, 250 miles!

In his introduction to the book St. John Adcock calls the private letters of the soldiers "the most potent of recruiting literature." Undoubtedly this is true of some of them. The casual, almost flippant, records of splendid heroism, the reflection of a spirit of gay courage, the description of the most picturesque and romantic aspects of battle—these tend, certainly, to fill the mind of the stay-at-home readers with a desire for participation in this great adventure.

But, on the other hand, such passages as "The dead were piled up in the trenches about ten deep, and there were trenches seven miles long," and "Our Maxim gun officer tried to fix his gun up during their murderous fire, but he got half his face blown away," are not likely to make fighting seem a pleasant occupation. It is true that the dead referred to in the first of these passages are the enemy's dead; still, there is a wholesale quality about those seven-mile trenches filled with dead ten deep that is not a recruiting allurement.

Nor is this letter, vivid in its realism, likely to make those not already warlike eager to enlist. It was sent to his parents at Ilfracombe by Private William Burgess of the Royal Field Artillery:

We left our landing place for the front on the Tuesday and got there on Saturday night. The Germans had just reached Liege then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by bursting shells.

The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross hospital. They dropped shells from airships and fired on it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.

Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and dropping like hail. The Colonel passed along the line and said, "Stick it, boys."

I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down—some getting their heads blown off and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my shirt off. A piece of shell went right through my shirt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.

We were there, all busy fighting, when an airship came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the shells were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.

Just after that a shell burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital. We were shelled out of there about 2 in the morning, and then taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next morning we were put on a ship for dear old England.



The First German Prisoners

[From The London Times.]

The following letter from a soldier at the front who has taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of Paris, Aug. 16:

We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action. We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They have been told a thousand phantasmagoria—that France had declared war, that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols, and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they had no desire to share a like fate.

The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits of bread which are passed about near them and which one gives them, and they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two rations of coffee. Their appetite is so great that, though in presence of a French officer they will click their heels together properly, they never cease at the same time to munch noisily and to fill out their hollow cheeks.

One feels that they believe us French to be up to every sort of devilment, that we are going to undress them, to take their papers, and they tremble from head to foot in fear of being shot. Even when you give them a cigarette, it does not seem to allay their mistrust. One of them, who was dying of thirst, would not drink the water that was offered him before the gendarme had tasted it in front of him.

They are all astonished at their adventure. They had been told that they were going to enter Maubeuge in company with the Belgians; to seize Maubeuge would be as easy as taking a cafe au lait—and there they are without their cafe au lait!

The officers are absolutely different. Prussian pride gave them an assurance which their mishap has transformed into irritation. A young Baron Lieutenant, like von Forstner, pretended that he couldn't make his bed, and refused to answer before simple soldiers. He couldn't feel anything but the humiliation of being a prisoner, and couldn't get accustomed to his new situation.

We found on the field of battle the medicine chest of a vet., who jotted down his impressions from minute to minute. When he was killed he was writing: "I see the shells bursting with a white smoke in the sky, which is lighted up from the south; luckily my helmet protects me from sunstroke." Evidently he was on an excursion, this veterinary surgeon, and was counting on coming to Paris, and had taken the most minute precautions of hygiene and of elegance. He was provided with scent and eau de cologne. He had even brought with him a rose ointment for the nails, and a superb gilt shoulder-belt which was to raise his prestige for when he passed under the Arc de Triomphe. The battery to which he belonged is annihilated now. We could observe on the spot the terrific effect of our artillery, which was very well commanded. Six abandoned guns, of which three are impossible to move, are there on the ground with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses—the pieces still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear, and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, Ultima regis ratio.

But this lesson seems to have made a bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded. The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see francs-tireurs everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to the frontier.

They arrive in a village toward 8 in the morning; three French dragoons are there as patrols. When the German column is within range, the three dragoons bring down the Colonel and dash off at full gallop from the other end of the village. The Germans are furious and swear that they have been attacked by francs-tireurs, and that they are going to inflict punishment. They seize the cure, a notable inhabitant, and two or three peasants, and take them off to be present at the burning of their houses, while waiting to be executed themselves.

I have this story from the cure, who arrived to us absolutely done, with his cassock in rags, without a hat on, after a day of shocks such as he has certainly never had in his life before. Although he has got the superb beard of a missionary, they made him march with the chasseurs, hitting him with the butts of their rifles till the moment when the French shrapnel arrived. Then it was sauve qui peut. Our brave cure saw all his butchers fall around him. When the noise had finished, five unarmed German chasseurs rushed toward him crying with their great, thick accent, "Catholics, Catholics!" They were Poles who were flying from the army and coming over to our lines. "With my own arms," said the cure proudly, "I made five prisoners."

Altogether bewilderment, softness, and indifference on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare them with ours!



Two Letters From the Trenches

[From The London Times, Oct. 25, 1914.]

A Canadian officer attached to the British forces writes as follows on Sept. 27:

It has been very fortunate for me having a recommendation to Gen. C. He said that he would welcome all the French-speaking Canadians with military knowledge that crossed the Atlantic. I keep my rank of Lieutenant and am attached to the —— Guards, which does scouting, patrol, and reconnoissance duty in areas prescribed by the Brigadier. We have plenty of most interesting work, which suits me down to the ground. Nothing could exceed the kindness shown to Canadian officers by their English brethren. We are all one in aim, in spirit, and in that indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are invisible.

This afternoon we are taking a good sound rest at the house of a retired French farmer, who has three sons fighting in the country. He is as game as game, and says he is just holding things together until the war is over. He is 75 and remembers the horrors of the last war, in which he fought in the artillery.... Our "look-out" men are ever on the alert, for we never take a meal or rest altogether. Sentries and signalers are always posted before we dismount. The cure joined us at the farmer's house and we enjoyed an excellent repast, with the honor of two local gendarmes who had brought in a German spy caught red-handed robbing the house of a peasant the night before and attempting to murder her. The man was dressed as a French peasant. Upon him we found evidence that he was a spy. Summary procedure made it easy to decide that the sentence of drumhead court-martial was death. And here again is an instance of the extraordinary clemency of the French clergy. The cure pleaded that the spy should not be shot and the extreme penalty inflicted. So I consented (not being a man of blood) to the prisoner being sent to the nearest French military post, to be executed or not, as the General shall order.

I really believe that all of the evidence which crowds into me supports the charge that this is not a campaign which has proved attractive to the German rank and file. Prisoners we have taken say that they have no relish for the fighting. They have been well plied with drink, and seem to urge that drunkenness may be pleaded as an excuse for crime.

An officer whose letter from the trenches we published a few days ago has since written a letter, dated Oct. 8, from which we take extracts:

Last week I wrote that we had been in the trenches ten days. Now we have been in them nearly three weeks, and still the fight goes on. We don't mind it now. We hated it at first. The inaction made us ill. But we recovered and began to make jokes about it. And now we don't care. We eat and sleep, and eat again; and we dig, eternally dig, grubbing our way deeper and deeper into the earth, and making covered ways that lead hundreds of yards back from the firing line into safety.

And at the end of one of these I sit at this moment; away on the rear slope of the hill which is our fortress. The sun is sinking far away down the valley of the Aisne, and the river flickers in the distance between lines of trees, while the little villages at the foot of the slopes are gradually losing themselves in the evening mist. How lovely to sit here in time of peace! Could one bear it after this, I wonder? With all the beauty, there are sad things around me; signs of war every way I look. To the right, a few yards off, are new-cut graves, and they are putting up headstones, made by a reservist who is a mason in private life. One man was killed yesterday, and we buried him after dark. There was no service, because we had neither light nor book; but I said the Lord's Prayer before the earth was thrown in, thinking there could be no harm.

Then away across a bend of the valley are more of our trenches, with the German parapets 200 yards away beyond. And over these our shells are bursting, fired by guns on the slope of the hill beneath me; they whistle softly as they skim through the air over my head, and I hear the burst as they land. Further away to the west is one of the enemy's strongholds, and there bigger shells are bursting, throwing up clouds of black smoke and dust. These pass by with a louder purring whistle like the sound of surplus air escaping from the pipes of an organ in church. They come from our big guns up in the woods across the river, hidden from view. And always up in the sky the German aeroplanes circle round and round, seeking for the guns, their engines buzzing and the sun shining on their wings. Now and then they dash away, perhaps to carry news, perhaps because a British or French machine has come upon the scene. When they spot our positions they drop little silvery packets, which unfold and show their gunners where to shoot. Sometimes they drop bombs, but these do little harm. At times the weather is foggy, so that the aeroplanes can do nothing at all, and warfare becomes suddenly ten years out of date.



Now the enemy are firing on the little village behind our lines, dropping shell among the houses, and always near the house where certain staff officers are at work. A curious point this—how close they get to the house when they can't possibly see the result of their fire. The explanation must be "spies." They are everywhere here; they wear British uniform and French uniform, and, most dangerous of all, civilian dress. It is our own fault; we allow the French population to return to the village right in our midst, and who in these times can question every one's rights? The other day three men in civilian dress were found near our lines sitting in trees; they were armed with wire-cutters, and said they were engaged in cutting vines. Now there are no vineyards near, but our wire entanglements were just beyond the wood. Again, one night we were to attack a small position at a given hour, but the order was afterward canceled. However, at the appointed time the enemy opened fire upon the ground we should have crossed and lighted the scene with rockets.

Nighttime is a period of continuous strain. The sentry peers into the darkness, imagining every bush to be an approaching enemy. Distant trees seem to change their position; bunches of grass, really quite close, seem to be men coming over the sky-line. One man questions another; the section commander is called upon. He in turn explains his fears to an officer. A single shot is ordered at the suspected object, and no sound is heard. So the night goes on. When we were new to the game a single shot was enough to alarm the whole line, and thousands of rounds were fired into the darkness. Now we know better. So also do the enemy. And it was satisfactory to find that our ammunition had not all been wasted, for a patrol recently discovered more than a hundred dead Germans in a wood in front of us. The ammunition had not been wasted that time. But, oh, what a wasteful war!



The Baptism of Fire

[From The London Times, Nov. 4, 1914.]

The following letter, thoroughly characteristic of the pluck and cheerfulness of the young British officer, was received from a cavalry subaltern at the front:

October 27.

Your two boxes of cigarettes were heaven. We've been in the trenches two days and nights, but no excitements, except a good dose of shrapnel three times a day, which does one no harm and rather relieves the monotony. I've got my half troop, 12 men, in this trench in a root field, with the rest of the squadron about 100 yards each side of us, and a farmhouse, half knocked down by shells, just behind. We get our rations sent up once a day in the dark, and two men creep out to cook tea in the quiet intervals. Tea is the great mainstay on service, just as it was on manoeuvres. The men are splendid, and as happy as schoolboys, and we've got plenty of straw at the bottom of the trench, which is better than any feather bed. We only had one pelting night, and we've had three or four fine days. We have not seen any German infantry from this trench, only one patrol and a sniper or two. Their guns, too, are out of sight, but hardly a mile away.

Our first day's real close-up fighting was the 19th. We cavalry went on about a day and a half in front of the infantry. We got into a village, and our advanced patrols started fighting hard, with a certain amount of fire from everywhere in front of us. Our advanced patrols gained the first group of houses, and we joined them. Firing came from a farm in front of us, and then a man came out of it and waved a white flag. I yelled, "Two hundred; white flag; rapid fire." But —— wouldn't let us fire. Then the squadron advanced across the root fields toward the farm (dismounted, in open order), and they opened a sharp fire on us from the farm. We took three prisoners in the roots, and retired to the houses again. That was our first experience of the white flag dodge; we lost two killed and one wounded.

Then I got leave to make a dash across a field, for another farm where they were sniping at us. I could only get half way, my Sergeant was killed and my Corporal hit. We lay down; luckily it was high roots and we were out of sight; but they had fairly got our range, and the bullets kept knocking up the dirt into one's face and all round. We just lay doggo for about half an hour, and then the fire slackened, and we crawled back.

I was pleased with my troop, under bad fire. They used the most awful language, talking quite quietly, and laughing all the time, even after the men were knocked over within a yard of them. I longed to be able to say that I liked it, after all one has heard about being under fire for the first time. But it is beastly. I pretended to myself for a bit that I like it, but it was no good. But when one acknowledged that it was beastly, one became all right again and cool.

After the firing had slackened we advanced again a bit, into the next group of houses, the edge of the village proper. I can't tell you how muddling it is. We did not know which was our front, we did not know if our own troops had come round us on the flanks, or whether they had stopped behind and were firing into us. And besides, a lot of German snipers were left in the houses we had come through, and every now and then bullets came singing by from God knows where. Four of us were talking in the road when about a dozen bullets came with a whistle. We all dived for the nearest door, and fell over each other, yelling with laughter. —— said, "I have a bullet through my new Sandon twillette breeches." We looked, and he had; it had gone clean through. He didn't tell us till two days after that it had gone through him too; but there it was, like the holes you make to blow an egg, only about 4 inches apart.

We stopped about two hours. Then the cavalry regiment on our left retired. Then we saw a lot of Germans among the fires they had lit (they set the houses on fire to mark their line of advance.) They were running from house to house. We were told not to fire, for fear of our own people on the other side. Then came a lot of them, shouting and singing and advancing down the street, through the burning houses. One felt a peculiar hatred for them. We heard afterward that there was a division of infantry, at first we thought there were only a few patrols.

We retired about two miles and dismounted for action. Soon they began to come up from three sides, and we retired again. They were pretty close, advancing higgledy-piggledy across the fields and firing. They shot abominably (nothing like the morning, from the houses, when they had all the ranges marked to a yard). We lost only about 20 horses, no men killed. "Hellfire Herbert" got his horse shot under him when they were within about 200 yards. He was next troop in front of me. He suddenly got complete "fou-rires" when he saw me. I got him a spare horse, and he was still laughing, and cursing them with a sort of triumph. We only trotted away. A man in my troop kept touching his cap to the Germans, saying "Third-class shots, third-class shots."

The next day we went forward to another places and intrenched against a very big German force, but we only had to face their guns. Poor —— was killed. They pushed us pretty hard back to our infantry. We were supposed to have done well.

Since then we have been doing infantry work in the trenches. We have been out of work in our trenches; only shrapnel and snipers. Some one described this war as "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." It is sad that it is such a bad country for cavalry. Cavalry work here against far superior forces of infantry, like we had the other day, is not good enough. The Germans are dashing good at that house-to-house fighting business.

It is horrible having to leave one's horses; it feels like leaving half oneself behind, and one feels the dual responsibility all the time. I hope we get them on the run soon, then will come our chance. They have been having terrific fighting on the line on each side of us, and it has gone well.

I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I've never been so well or so happy. Nobody grumbles at one for being dirty. I've only had my boots off once in the last ten days, and only washed twice. We are up and standing to our rifles at 5 A.M. when doing this infantry work, and saddled up by 4:30 A.M. when with our horses. Our poor horses don't get their saddles off when we are in trenches.

The dogs and cats left in the deserted villages are piteous, and the wretched inhabitants trekking away with great bundles and children in their hands.

I can't make out what has happened to the Battle of the Aisne; it seems to have got tired and died.

The Indians had two men killed directly, and said, "All wars are good, but this is a bot'utcha war. Now we advance." A Colonel of a French regiment on our flank was sitting in a pub. in the village when the Germans came around that flank and started firing their Maxim gun. The Colonel and his orderly rushed into the street, and each discharged ten rounds quick, and then went back and finished their drinks. It's horrible when they put "Jack Johnsons" into your bivouac at night from about twelve miles off. You can hear them coming for about 30 seconds, and judge whether they are coming for you or a little to one side.



An All-Night Attack

[From The New York Tribune.]

PARIS, Jan. 9.—The most picturesque description of night fighting in the trenches written by any French correspondent at the front is published today in Le Figaro. It comes from Charles Tardieu, Corporal in an infantry regiment, and is a detailed record, half hour by half hour, of a night of attacks and counter-attacks from 6 o'clock in the evening until dawn. After describing three successive German assaults, during which searchlights and flashlights played important parts, the Corporal notes:

2:25 A.M.—All the Corporals run back for ammunition. We had expended a hundred rounds each. Away we go to our ammunition reserve, hid in a big hole twenty yards to the rear, and we come running back and distribute packages of cartridges. Each man cleans his rifle. An hour passes in silence, broken only by the intermittent volleys and by the moaning of the wounded and dying, some of whom exclaim: "Kamarades, kamarades, drink, drink!" We will look after them when the day breaks.

3:15—Here they come at us again. Bullets whistle over our heads. Our Captain passes the order in whispers not to open fire until the bouches sales reach our wire network, then to shoot like hell. We smile grimly and keep still. Every minute the firing draws nearer. We await behind our loopholes, now and then risking a peep through them. These loopholes are only fifteen or twenty centimeters wide, but if a bullet comes through them it is a skull pierced and certain death. This silent waiting is a tremendous mental and nervous strain.

We keep still as mice, with clenched teeth. Luminous fuses, like roman candles, burst forth in every direction, exploding in dust over our heads. A moment later a dazzling signal light rocket bursts fifty yards high, just above our trenches, lighting them up as clear as day for several seconds. We crouch down under the lower parapet like moles. Immediately afterward a mad fusillade, and the German .77 guns, having got a better range than during the previous attacks, throw shells that burst, luckily for us, nearly one hundred yards behind our trenches. This attack must be general, for we hear fusillades cracking far away to the right and left.

Suddenly we tremble in spite of ourselves. The hoarse sound of the short German bugles pierces the night with four lugubrious notes in a minor key, funereal, deathly. It is their charge. Yells, oaths, and vociferations are heard in front of us. Our Captain commands us to fire by volleys: "Aim! Fire!" "They must have felt something," drawls out some one of us in a nasal, Montmartre-like voice. Then again: "Aim! Fire!" What sport! Then comes the cric-crac-cric-crac, sewing machine-like hammering of our mitrailleuses. Our Captain passes the word: "Fire low! fire low! Aim! Fire!" Volley follows volley. The enemy's dash seems checked. Their fire slackens. We hear their officers swearing and yelling at their men in shrill, high-pitched, penetrating voices. Joyful exaltation gives us a sort of fever. "Aim! Fire!" But the bouches sales make another rush at us. Driven on by their infuriated officers, they again reach our wire network. Our Captain commands, "Fire at will." Then, "Fire at repetition, fire until the magazine is exhausted." Just as the Germans, in wavering, hesitating groups, presenting vague outlines, try to cut our networks they tumble over like marionettes. Already some of our men, intoxicated with fury, stand up in the trenches.

Our Captain commands, "En avant a la baionnette!" ("At them with bayonet.") A fierce roar from our chests, and the only bugler left alive in our company sounds the charge. Away we go with our bayonets. We scarcely reach them when the bouches are put to rout. Some of them escape helter-skelter, throwing down rifles and knapsacks. "Halt!" commands our Captain. We lie down and keep up the firing on the retreating remnants of the enemy. "Back to the trenches!" is the next command. A few more volleys in the direction of the Germans, then comes the command, "Cease firing. Take your haversacks, eat, and rest." All becomes silent again except for the harrowing moans of the wounded. We learn that the German assault has been repulsed all along the line. Their losses must have been awful.

5 A.M.—Gray, misty dawn breaks from behind the orme trees. Soon we are able to see what has happened. Over three hundred bouches are on the ground in front of our company's trench, lying dead or wounded. Our cooks with their soup pots get out of our hole and go to the rear to prepare in the underground kitchens our well-earned coffee and cabbage soup. Our Captain rubs his hands with satisfaction. A strong patrol goes out of our trenches to reconnoitre the enemy's positions in the pine wood. The rest of us try to get some sleep.



The Germans as Seen from a Convent

[From The London Times, Aug. 16, 1914.]

Some interesting sidelights on the events of the past fortnight in Belgium are provided by extracts from the diary of a young English girl, Miss Lydia Evans, who has just returned from a convent school at Fouron, near Vise. The following are among the entries in this graphic narrative, published in The Evening News:

Aug. 2.—All the people of the village passed down with cows, calves, horses, hay, &c., which they were obliged to send in for the Belgian Army near Liege. The first troop of Prussians came into the village this afternoon on the pretense of having a horse shod.

Aug. 3.—Two more troops of soldiers arrived. The Prussians slept at our convent, some in the park, others on beds in the recreation room. The reverend mother put everything at their disposal. They asked nicely, but gave the impression that if refused they would take more. We all went to bed at 10 o'clock. Everybody got an alarm to dress half an hour afterward. We came down and found the place full of Germans, who were exceedingly polite. They are magnificent. The meanest soldier is perfectly equipped, everything perfectly new, and splendid horses. They are like theatre soldiers, they are so perfect. They were awfully nice, and talked a lot.

Aug. 4.—Between Monday and Tuesday there was a terrible fight between the Germans and Belgians at Vise because the Belgians would not let the Germans pass to get to Liege. The Belgians blew up several big bridges between Vise and Liege, also the one at Vise.

Aug. 5.—One man told us all the villagers had left except himself. The German soldiers were here all day, but are very polite. They always bow and salute. We hear a terrible noise at Vise of bombardment, and a great fusillade in the convent. A wounded man was brought to the convent.

Aug. 6.—A curate near here has been shot. The Germans are very nice if you give them what they want, but if they are refused the pistol comes out. Old Mother Therese was at the door when a soldier asked her for a kettle. She refused, and he nearly shot her.

Aug. 7.—A most fearful noise was heard about 2 o'clock. They say that it was a fort blown up. A German aeroplane passed yesterday. The soldiers are camping in the woods. There are seven wounded here. Nearly all the others are taken to Aix-la-Chapelle.

Aug. 8.—Went to mass in the village. A man told us that the Germans had burned two big farms at Warsage (the next village.) Two women and two men arrived from Liege. They said that the people had been living in caves for the last two days and nights. These poor people saw awful sights in coming across the fields, which were covered with dead. We have heard that Berneau is burned and the women and children hung. The Germans are furious at having lost such a number of men before seeing the French. A soldier passed last night, and Maria lifted up a corner of the curtain. In a minute he had out his revolver and threatened to shoot her. Some of the soldiers opposite the convent were drunk.

Aug. 9.—An aeroplane passed right over us, and seemed to drop something white. The soldiers are going about in bands destroying and laying waste every house and garden. They pass with bottles of wine and their pockets bulging out with things they have stolen. They set a house on fire just near the convent. There are 40,000 soldiers between here and Niouland.

Aug. 10.—There was a terrific crash at the door. Four German officers, who had come in a motor, pointed their revolvers and asked for wine. They looked as if they had been drinking. We had a fearful fright after dinner. An officer, followed by a soldier, came to ask us where the cure was, and threatened to shoot us because we could not tell him. Miss MacMahon had to lead him to the rector's house, with a revolver pointed at her back all the way. The houses on either side are burning. The nuns asked the German officers if they would spare the convent. They laughed and said they would make it a cemetery for their dead. They took away the wounded, and as soon as they had gone the nuns woke us up, and we started out, following all the back roads.

* * * * *

A postcard has been received from Miss Agnes Holliday, daughter of a Hammersmith builder, who is at a convent school near Liege, in which she states that on Tuesday night last "the convent was full of German soldiers, to whom we spoke. At Fouron they have had a terrible time."



War-Time Scenes in Rouen

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 8, 1914.]

The following is a literal translation of a letter just received in New York by a French lady's maid from her sister at Rouen, and gives the point of view of the modest laboring classes in France:

ROUEN, Aug. 21, 1914.

My Dear Sister Henriette:

If I judge according to our impatience to get your news, I understand you are anxious for ours. I hope that you made a good voyage and that nothing disagreeable has happened to you during the journey. There is a little change in life in Rouen. Numerous factories are closed, for the reason that the men are gone to war, and women are powerless to operate the machinery. As for me, the sewing is still going a little, but I do not think that it will last long. Business stops little by little; the most of the stores are closing, which gives the city a sad appearance. Per contra, there is a big bustle in and around the railroad station of the Rue Verte. Hundreds of persons stand on the square near the station, to assist the passing of the English troops on their way to Paris; they are acclaimed by the cry of "Vive la France!" "Vive l'Angleterre!" "Down with Germany and the barbarians!"

Numerous trains bring hundreds of young wounded English, French, and Belgian soldiers. Many offices of the Red Cross are settled in the largest hotels of the city. Many citizens have asked to take some of the wounded into their homes. We are going to have several of them at our home. Mother is already preparing two rooms. She has moved Lili's bed into the kitchen. As for us, we are going to sleep in the armchairs. Lili talks of the war like a grown-up person, and so seriously! She also wants to take care of the wounded. She will divert them. She made dresses for all her dolls and put them to bed. She set on the table all the history books to interest the soldiers. Of course she will do the reading herself. Then she collected all the pieces of old sheets to make some lint out of them, but she will do that in the kitchen when the wounded are sleeping, so as not to worry them. If you were in Rouen now you would be proud of your god-child. Maman had to have made for her a big white table "for nurse." She goes to school every day, and I promised that I would take her with me this afternoon to see an English warship which arrived in the Seine yesterday. It seems that the ship had narrowly escaped capture by the Germans, but I cannot give you much information. We don't have any news from our own soldiers. I do not know where father is. George and Maurice must be artillerymen in Belfort. Jeanne and Helene are in despair, thinking of their husbands. Maurice's baby is always so sweet; he does not suspect that his father is at war. Our aunt has no news from Leon, Andre, and Joseph.

This is all the news. I hope that my letter will reach you. Do not worry. But if the Germans arrive in Rouen they will find somebody to receive them. If the men are not strong enough the women will help them.

For my share I would like to kill one of them, and it is the Kaiser himself; I assure you that I would do it gladly. My dear Henriette, I say "au revoir" to you today.

Maman and Lili send you their best kisses. A big kiss from your fragile

MADELEINE.

P.S.—It is a good thing that I am always so cheerful and contented. It happens sometimes that I can make Jeanne and Helene forget, and I give them a little hope.



"It Is for Us and for France"

[From The New York Sun.]

_LONDON, Oct. 14.—To those who believe, as Germans would have the world believe, that the French Nation is decadent, fit only to disappear from the face of the earth, the following letter, simple as any letter can be, yet full of the Spartanlike qualities that even a German must admire, will serve as an inspiration.

It was written to a French soldier by his sister. The soldier showed it to his officer, who was so pleased that he had it published anonymously for the troops. One of the men at the front has sent the letter to The Times. A translation of it follows:_

Sept. 4, 1914.

My dear Edward: I hear that Charles and Lucien died on Aug. 28; Eugene is very badly wounded; Louis and Jean are dead also. Rose has disappeared.

Mamma weeps. She says that you are strong, and begs you to go to avenge them.

I hope your officers will not refuse you permission. Jean had the Legion of Honor; succeed him in this.

Of the eleven of us who went to the war eight are dead. My dear brother, do your duty, whatever is asked of you. God gave you your life, and He has the right to take it back; that is what mamma says.

We embrace you with all our heart and long to see you again.

The Prussians are here. Young Joudon is dead; they have pillaged everything. I have come back from Gerbervillers, which is destroyed. The brutes!

Now, my dear brother, make the sacrifice of your life. We have hope of seeing you again, for something gives me a presentiment and tells me to hope.

We embrace you in all our hearts. Adieu and au revoir, if God permits.

THY SISTER.

It is for us and for France.

Think of your brothers and of grandfather in '70.



"Chant of Hate Against England"

How Ernst Lissauer's Lines Were "Sung to Pieces" in Germany.

[From The Basler Nachrichten.]

The ever-increasing hatred in Germany against England and the constantly diminishing bitterness expressed in German circles toward the French is commented upon at considerable length by the Basler Nachrichten, one of the leading German newspapers of Switzerland, which publishes excerpts of utterances of leading Germans to illustrate its deductions. The Swiss paper's article follows:

It pays to take a birdseye view of a phenomenon which, in a most interesting fashion, is becoming more and more apparent: the increase of the German hatred against Englishmen and the diminution of the German hatred against the Frenchmen.

The most eloquent examples of this white-hot wrath against the English are the now well-known army orders of the Bavarian Crown Prince, Rupprecht. Under date of Oct. 29 the text of the first order was made public. It reads:

Soldiers of the Sixth Army! We have now the good luck to have also the Englishmen opposite us on our front, troops of that race whose envy was at work for years to surround us with a ring of foes and to throttle us. That race especially we have to thank for this war. Therefore, when now the order is given to attack this foe, practice retribution for their hostile treachery and for the many heavy sacrifices! Show them that the Germans are not so easily to be wiped out of history. Show them that, with German blows of a special kind. (Mit deutsche Hiebe von ganz besouderer Art!) Here is the opponent who most blocks a restoration of the (Drauf,) peace. Up and at him!

RUPPRECHT.

Under date of Nov. 11 an order of similar purport issued by the same army commander was made public:

Soldiers! The eyes of the whole world are upon you. It is now imperative that in the battle with our most hated foe we shall not grow numb, and that we shall at last break his arrogance. Already he is growing pliable, (muerbe.) Numerous officers and men have surrendered voluntarily, but the great decisive blow is still to be struck. Therefore you must persevere to the end. The enemy must be downed; you must not let him loose from your teeth. (Ihr musst ihn nicht aus den Zahnen lessen.) We must, will and shall conquer!

At the same time the Bavarian Crown Prince had the "Song of Hate Against England" of Ernst Lissauer distributed among the troops as an army order. This poem, which was issued as early as Sept. 1 in the "Kultur-Beitraegen," published by R. Dammert in Berlin, reads in full:

HASSGESANG GEGEN ENGLAND.

Was schiert uns Russe und Franzos'? Schuss wider Schuss und Stoss um Stoss, Wir lieben sie nicht, Wir hassen sie nicht, Wir schuetzen Weichsel und Wasgaupass, Wir haben nur einen einzigen Hass, Wir lieben vereint, wir hassen vereint, Wir haben nur einen einzigen Feind: Denn ihr alle wisst, denn ihr alle wisst, Er sitzt geduckt hinter der grauen Flut, Voll Neid, voll Wut, voll Schlaeue, voll List, Durch Wasser getrennt, die sind dicker als Blut. Wir wollen treten in ein Gericht, Einen Schwur zu schwoeren, Gesicht in Gesicht. Einen Schwur von Erz, den verblaest kein Wind, Einen Schwur fuer Kind und fuer Kindeskind, Vernehmt das Wort, sagt nach das Wort, Es waelzt sich durch ganz Deutschland fort: Wir wollen nicht lassen von unserem Hass, Wir haben alle nur einen Hass, Wir lieben vereint, wir hassen vereint, Wir haben alle nur einen Feind: ENGLAND!

In der Bordkajuete, im Feiersaal, Sassen Schiffsoffiziere beim Liebesmahl, Wie ein Saebelhieb, wie ein Segelschwung, Einer riss gruessend empor den Trunk, Knapp hinknallend wie Ruderschlag, Drei Worte sprach er: "Auf den Tag!" Wem galt das Glas? Sie hatten alle nur einen Hass. Wer war gemeint? Sie hatten alle nur einen Feind: ENGLAND!

Nimm du die Voelker der Erde in Sold, Baue Waelle aus Barren von Gold, Bedecke die Meerflut mit Bug bei Bug, Du rechnetest klug, doch nicht klug genug. Was schiert uns Russe und Franzos'! Schuss wider Schuss, und Stoss um Stoss. Wir kaempfen den Kampf mit Bronze und Stahl Und schliessen Frieden irgend einmal, Dich werden wir Hassen mit langem Hass, Wir werden nicht lassen von unserem Hass, Hass zu Wasser und Hass zu Land, Hass des Hauptes und Hass der Hand, Hass der Haemmer und Hass der Kronen, Drosselnder Hass von siebzig Millionen, Sie lieben vereint, sie hassen vereint, Sie alle haben nur einen Feind: ENGLAND!

[Following is a translation of the song by Barbara Henderson, appearing in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 15, 1914:]

French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot! We love them not, we hate them not, We hold the Weichsel and Vosges gate. We have but one and only hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone. He is known to you all, he is known to you all, He crouches behind the dark gray flood, Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall, Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood. Come, let us stand at the Judgment Place, An oath to swear to, face to face, An oath of bronze no wind can shake, An oath for our sons and their sons to take. Come, hear the word, repeat the word, Throughout the Fatherland make it heard. We will never forego our hate, We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone— ENGLAND!

In the Captain's Mess, in the banquet hall, Sat feasting the officers, one and all, Like a sabre blow, like the swing of a sail, One seized his glass and held high to hail; Sharp-snapped like the stroke of a rudder's play, Spoke three words only: "To the Day!" Whose glass this fate? They had all but a single hate. Who was thus known? They had one foe and one alone— ENGLAND!

Take you the folk of the Earth in pay, With bars of gold your ramparts lay, Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow, Ye reckon well, but not well enough now. French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot, We fight the battle with bronze and steel, And the time that is coming Peace will seal. You we will hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate by water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, Hate of seventy millions choking down. We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone— ENGLAND!

This poem, according to the Taegliche Rundschau, has already had the fate of every folksong—the version of it that was circulated among the Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on the piano.

As can be seen, therefore, the popularity of the song and its sentiment is by no means confined to Bavaria. It extends throughout the entire empire. Of hundreds of voices in the press, let us mention only one. Councilor of Justice Eschenbach of Berlin, in the Neue Gesellschaftliche Korrespondenz writes:

To honor our immortal heroes of Tsing-tau, and for the eternal shame and reproach of the scoundrel nations, Japan and England, I propose the following: Let the entire German press scorn in the next fourteen days to permit the words "Englishmen" or "Japanese" to appear in its columns and before the eyes of our people and of the entire civilized world; but instead, and invariably, let the word "Moerder" (murderers) be used for "Englishmen" and the word "Raubmoerder" (highway assassins) for "Japanese." For no other name will there be hereafter among us for these greatest scoundrels of history. Thereby care will be taken both for the present throughout the world as far as the German language is heard and the results of the German spirit are known, and also for future historians, that the proper point of view shall be given throughout eternity for the condemnation of these murderous gangs accursed of God.

How different is the attitude of the Germans toward the French!

From a trench on the Aisne the following was written to the Heidelberger Zeitung:

Four hundred meters from where we lie, likewise intrenched, lie these wretched Englishmen, toward whom our people feel a holy fury, while they regard the battle with the Frenchmen, on the other hand, rather as a member of a university student corps regards an honorable duel. I, too, am entirely of that view.

The well-known psychologist, Prof. W. Hellpach of Karlsruhe, writes to the Berliner Tageblatt from the field:

The German soldier, too, does not hate the French people. Indeed, no one hates it. That is one of the most amazing phenomena of this war—our inner relation to France. Daily and hourly we hear words of disgust concerning the Russians, see gestures of hatred against the Britons—but toward France there is expressed amid all purely warlike antagonism a sort of sympathy resembling almost a smiling love for a naughty child which one feels obliged to punish because it has been guilty of stupid but very serious misbehavior.

We must force France to its knees—perhaps more completely than any of our other foes—but every one seems to hope that after this, after this last lesson, France will come to her senses and conclude a real peace with her German neighbor. Even among the common men in our ranks there has developed almost plant like a certain realization of a common duty of these two nations, a feeling of certain virtues which they, complementing one another, can preserve only by co-operation. But for the cultured ones among us, the idea of a hereditary feud has given way to a clear consciousness that there is a middle European Continental culture, supported by German, Austrian, and French genius in common, and that the preservation, development, and continuation thereof as against a hasty and superficial Anglization must be the task of the future. All, all now learn through experience that this matter with France is a woe of civilization (kulturjammer), and that now at last it is going to change, that it could change, if—

In the same newspaper the Berlin National Economist, Prof. Werner Sombart, writes:

Against France we probably experience the least aversion or hatred. At bottom we have really nothing "against the Frenchmen," but they have a great deal against us. But we find them, in spite of their fanatical hatred of the Germans (which we honor and respect) chivalrous antagonists, who in their wrath of battle are certainly quite our peers; and in them, we find, there is far more force and will for victory than we were in the beginning wont to believe. They die for their fatherland, and their final reason for fighting is after all an ideal one, the faith in the glory and greatness of a super-individual, the self-sacrifice to a whole that is higher than the personal. Thus, at least, does that France stand opposed to us, that is fighting for its existence in the trenches along the Aisne.

With the rabble that shouts "a bas la guerre" in Paris, we need reckon just as little as with the rather doubtful citizens that constitute the immediate Government of France and whose heroism seems to show great rents these days. Yes, for the heroic race of Frenchmen we feel almost a sort of pity, as with a noble wild game of the forest, wounded unto death. And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue from its anguish of death and still grasps at it, as a drowning man grasps at a wisp of straw. Don Quixote still remains the "noble knight" for whom—if he appears in the age of firearms—we still fire three salvos of honor over his grave.

And then, when we mention the word "France," there arise all the memories of the imperishable cultural values which its people have given to us. I believe that there are many, very many among us, who in their hearts hope that there may once again be something like a co-operative understanding and journeying together of Germans and Frenchmen, even if in a distant future which the youngest among us will probably not live to see—an agreement which through a union of German and French elements of culture will promise vast achievements for the purposes of humanity. In the last analysis—for that has in these very days been more frequently expressed—these two nations belong together; they are of equal worth, of equal spirit, of equal fineness, and yet so different that they can give each other infinitely much.

Just as has the hate against England, so has this friendship for France found poetic expression. In the Hamburger Kriegsblatt we read a poem by Wilhelm Hoehne, the final stanza of which reads:

Ma pauvre France! Wann siehst du es ein Dass all deine Buendnisse Trug und Schein? Was meinst du, waerst du mit dem vereint, Der dich niederringt heute—ein ehrlicher Feind! Auf "Deutsche Treue" da koenntest du zaehlen! Mit uns im Bund koennt'st der Welt du befehlen. Dem Briten, dem Russen, dem Asiaten! Deutschland hat nie einen Freund verraten!

(Translation.)

Ma pauvre France, when wilt thou see That all thy allies are cheating thee? What, though if thou with him wouldst go Who now overwhelms thee—an honest foe! On German faith thou couldst reckon sure; With us, thou couldst rule the world secure, The Briton, the Russian, the Asian, bend. Germany has never betrayed a friend!



ANSWERING THE "CHANT OF HATE."

By BEATRICE M. BARRY.

French and Russian, they matter not, For England only your wrath is hot; But little Belgium is so small You never mentioned her at all— Or did her graveyards, yawning deep, Whisper that silence was discreet?

For Belgium is waste! Ay, Belgium is waste! She welters in the blood of her sons, And the ruins that fill the little place Speak of the vengeance of the Huns. "Come, let us stand at the Judgment place," German and Belgian, face to face. What can you say? What can you do? What will history say of you? For even the Hun can only say That little Belgium lay in his way. Is there no reckoning you must pay? What of the Justice of that "Day"? Belgium one voice—Belgium one cry Shrieking her wrongs, inflicted by GERMANY!

In her ruined homesteads, her trampled fields, You have taken your toll, you have set your seal; Her women are homeless, her men are dead, Her children pitifully cry for bread; Perchance they will drink with you—"To the Day!" Let each man construe it as he may. What shall it be? They, too, have but one enemy; Whose work is this? Belgium has but one word to hiss— GERMANY!

Take you the pick of your fighting men Trained in all warlike arts, and then Make of them all a human wedge To break and shatter your sacred pledge; You may fling your treaty lightly by, But that "scrap of paper" will never die! It will go down to posterity, It will survive in eternity. Truly you hate with a lasting hate; Think you you will escape that hate? "Hate by water and hate by land; Hate of the head and hate of the hand." Black and bitter and bad as sin, Take you care lest it hem you in, Lest the hate you boast of be yours alone, And curses, like chickens, find roost at home IN GERMANY!



England Caused the War

By T. von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Imperial Chancellor.

Following is the full text of the speech delivered by the German Chancellor at the session of the Reichstag in Berlin on Dec. 2, 1914:

The Emperor, who is absent with the army, has charged me to transmit his best wishes and cordial greetings to the German Reichstag, with whom he is known to be united till death in the stress of danger and in the common concern for the weal of the Fatherland.

Our first thought goes out to the Kaiser and the army and navy—our soldiers who are fighting for the honor and greatness of the empire. Full of pride and unshakable confidence, we look to them and to our Austro-Hungarian comrades in arms, who are firmly united to us, to fight great battles with brilliant bravery.

Our most recent ally in battle who has been obliged to join us is the Ottoman Empire, which knows well that with the destruction of the German Empire it, too, would lose its national right to control its own destiny. As our enemies have formed a powerful coalition against us, they will, I hope, find that the arm of our brave allies reaches the weak spots in their world position.

On Aug. 4 the Reichstag expressed the firm resolution of the whole people to undertake the war which had been forced upon them and to defend their independence to the utmost.

Since then great deeds have been accomplished. The incomparable gallantry of our troops has carried the war into the enemy's country. There we still stand firm and can regard the future with every confidence, but the enemy's resistance is not broken.

We are not yet at the end of our sacrifices. The nation will continue to support those sacrifices with the same heroism as hitherto, for we must and will fight to a successful end our defensive war for right and freedom. We will then remember how our defenseless compatriots in hostile countries were maltreated in a manner which is a disgrace to all civilization. The world must learn that no one can hurt a hair on the head of a German subject with impunity.

It is evident to us who is responsible for this—the greatest of all wars. The apparent responsibility falls on those in Russia who ordered and carried out the mobilization of the Russian Army; the real responsibility, however, falls on the British Government. The Cabinet in London could have made the war impossible if it had without ambiguity declared at Petrograd that Great Britain would not allow a Continental war to develop from the Austro-Servian conflict.

Such a declaration would also have obliged France to take energetic measures to restrain Russia from undertaking warlike operations. Then our action as mediators between Petrograd and Vienna would have been successful, and there would have been no war.

But Great Britain did not act thus. Great Britain was aware of the bellicose machinations of the partly irresponsible but powerful group around the Czar. She saw how the ball was rolling, but placed no obstacle in its path. In spite of all its assurances of peace London informed Petrograd that Great Britain was on the side of France and, consequently, on the side of Russia.

The Cabinet of London allowed this monstrous worldwide war to come about hoping, with the help of the Entente, to destroy the vitality of England's greatest European competitor in the markets of the world. Therefore, England and Russia have before God and men the responsibility for the catastrophe which has fallen upon Europe. Belgian neutrality, which England pretended to defend, was nothing but a disguise.

On the evening of Aug. 2 we informed Brussels that we were obliged, in the interest of self-defense and in consequence of the war plans of France, which were known to us, to march through Belgium, but already, on the afternoon of the same day, Aug. 2, before anything of our action in Brussels could have been known in London, the British Government promised France unconditional assistance in case the German fleet should attack the French coast. Nothing was said about Belgium neutrality.

How can England maintain that she drew the sword because we violated Belgian neutrality? How could the British statesmen, whose past is well known, speak at all of Belgian neutrality? When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing with our march into Belgium it was not yet established whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not desire to spare the country and retire under protest to Antwerp. For military reasons I cannot go into whether there was the possibility of such a development on Aug. 4.

As to the guilt of the Belgian Government, many indications were already known at that time, but there were no positive and written proofs. Now, however, that it is demonstrated by documents found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts.

One is that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-Aug. 4 entered Belgian territory they were on the ground of a State which had given up its neutrality long ago. The other is that, not for the sake of the neutrality of Belgium, which she had herself undermined, did England declare war on us, but because she believed that she would be able to master us with the help of two great Continental powers.

Since Aug. 2, since her promise to assist France, England was no longer neutral, and was actually at war with us, and the argument that the declaration of war was a sequel to the violation of Belgian neutrality is nothing but a piece of play-acting performed to mystify the English people and neutral States.

Now that the Anglo-Belgian war plans are unveiled in their smallest details, the policy of British statesmen is branded before the tribunal of history for all time.

But British diplomacy went further. At England's request Japan snatches away heroic Kiao-Chau and violates the neutrality of China. Has England interfered in this violation of neutrality? Has England shown a care for neutral States in this case?

When, five years ago, I was called to office the Triple Alliance was opposed by a firmly united Entente. England's work was designed to serve the known principle of the balance of power, which means in plain German that the principle, followed for centuries by British policy and directed against the strongest Continental power, should find its strongest tool in the Triple Entente. This proves from the beginning the aggressive character of the Entente toward the plainly defensive tendencies of the Triple Alliance.

This was the germ of the forcible explosion. German policy was obliged to try to avert the danger of war by an understanding with the individual powers of the Entente. At the same time she was obliged to strengthen her defensive forces so that she should be prepared if war should come all the same. We did both. In France we always encountered ideas of revanche felt by ambitious politicians. With Russia some agreements were concluded, but Russia's firm alliance with France, her antagonism to us and our ally, Austria-Hungary, her Pan-Slavistic desire for power, her artificial hatred for Germany, made it impossible to conclude an agreement which in the case of a political crisis would exclude the danger of war.