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WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN 
 COMMISSION ABROAD 
 
War Time France 
 
 THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN 
 COMMISSION ABROAD 
 
 ^3 
 
 hC'wS 
 
 BY 
 
 MAJOR F. R. STODDARD, Jr. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
^€ 
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 
 Giffc 
 Author 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 To my Comrades of the Veteran Corps of Artillery and the 
 
 Ninth Coast Artillery Corps of the New York Guard, 
 
 nmth vihom have been some of my happiest associations. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Back and forth across the Atlantic, ever 
 since the entrance of America into the war, 
 there has been a continuous procession of rep- 
 resentative citizens from all the Allied coun- 
 tries, soldiers, statesmen, technical experts, and 
 business men, who are forging the chain of 
 knowledge and understanding which will bind 
 us together in a solid fellowship of efficiency 
 and good-will for many years to come. The 
 following story is the personal narrative of one 
 such commission. It is not in any sense a mili- 
 tary report, nor does it touch upon anything 
 which can be regarded as a military secret. It 
 is the intimate, informal story of the adven- 
 tures and the day by day happenings of an 
 American Commission abroad. 
 
 This Commission is, to the best of my be- 
 lief, unique in the annals of the Militia of the 
 United States. It is the only time that a 
 Board of Officers belonging to a militia organ- 
 
 vii 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ization has been sent with credentials from the 
 Federal government to obtain important mili- 
 tary information. 
 
 The adventures of the Commission were 
 many. Captain Wilder was gassed on the 
 Aisne front at Chemin des Dames, the first 
 man in the uniform of an American officer to 
 receive that unpleasant distinction. The report 
 presented by Major Stoddard to the Govern- 
 ment of the United States on behalf of the 
 Commission has been the principal document 
 on the subject in the possession of the War De- 
 partment. The services of Lieutenant Cabot 
 Ward were of such value that he was per- 
 suaded to remain in France and was made a 
 Lieutenant-Colonel in the National Army. 
 
 As the Commanding Officer of the Ninth 
 Coast Artillery, N. Y. G., I feel particular 
 satisfaction writing this introduction, and take 
 this occasion to say a few words about the cir- 
 cumstances which led to the sending of this 
 unusual mission and about the regiment which 
 accomplished such results. 
 
 What would happen if, in some ingenious 
 way, Germany should succeed in sending a 
 fleet of aircraft to bombard our seacoast cities? 
 We sincerely hope that no such event will ever 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 occur. But it is a possibility and wars are not 
 won by hopes. They are won by those nations 
 who prepare in advance against every con- 
 tingency, even what Aristotle calls "the im- 
 probable possibility." It had occurred to a 
 number of persons in this country as early as 
 the summer of 1916, that, in case of trouble 
 with Germany or any great foreign power, the 
 coast cities of the United States might be 
 raided by aircraft and attacked in such a way 
 that they could not be defended by the existing 
 coast artillery. 
 
 In the fall of that year, after conferences 
 with Major General Leonard Wood, U.S.A., 
 then commanding the Department of the East, 
 and foreign officers who had had experience 
 with the anti-aircraft artillery, those of us who 
 were the active officers of the Society of the 
 War of 1812-Veteran Corps of Artillery, came 
 to the conclusion that such defenses were nec- 
 essary and should be provided for the seacoast 
 cities of the United States. 
 
 We began a campaign of recruiting and or- 
 ganization which has culminated in the forma- 
 tion of the Ninth Coast Artillery Corps, New 
 York Guard, and the sending of this important 
 commission abroad. Early in 1917 we began 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 recruiting a regiment made up of men, many 
 of whom for one reason or another were not 
 available for service abroad but who were 
 willing to perform the patriotic duty of filling 
 the place of the old National Guard which 
 had been called to the Federal service. Two 
 batteries were organized as early as March 
 27th, 1917, and by the end of July there were 
 1400 men enlisted and organized into twelve 
 Provisional Batteries. We not only recruited 
 the men, but we provided our own equipment, 
 rifles, ammunition and machine guns and, with 
 the consent of the War Department, we con- 
 tracted for a three-inch anti-aircraft gun for 
 drill purposes. Later most of the personnel 
 of these batteries became the Ninth Coast 
 Artillery Corps of the New York Guard. 
 
 During this time the ofl5cers of the regi- 
 ment were busily engaged in the study and 
 investigation of all matters relating to ord- 
 nance and anti-aircraft artillery, as far as such 
 information could be obtained in this country. 
 But we soon became convinced that anti-air- 
 craft fighting was such a new branch of war- 
 fare that the only reliable information was 
 obtainable through foreign sources. Although 
 the War Department and the United States 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 Navy offered us every assistance and gave us 
 access to their confidential documents, it be- 
 came very clear that if we wanted complete 
 information on how to defend our coast cities 
 against German aircraft it would be necessary 
 to send and get it from abroad. 
 
 At the request of Major General J. Frank- 
 lin Bell, U.S.A., the Governor of New York 
 State directed that three oflicers selected by 
 me from the regiment go to France and Eng- 
 land, to make a study of anti-aircraft artillery, 
 and bring back a report. I chose the best men 
 I could find for the work. The Senior Officer, 
 the author of this book, was Major Francis R. 
 Stoddard, Jr., who was then in command of 
 the Second Battalion of the regiment, having 
 served in the United States Artillery during 
 the war with Spain and on the Mexican bor- 
 der. The others were Captain Robert H. 
 Wilder, a distinguished engineer and a special- 
 ist in shells and fuses, and Lieutenant Cabot 
 Ward, Adjutant of the Second Battalion, a 
 man of the widest diplomatic experience, hav- 
 ing been Secretary of State for Porto Rico, 
 President of the Senate and Acting Governor 
 of Porto Rico, and Minister and Special Rep- 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 resentative of the United States to various 
 South American Republics. 
 
 Through the kindly assistance of Captain 
 George W. Burleigh, later Lieutenant-Colonel 
 of the regiment, many preliminary difficulties 
 were overcome, and the Commission sailed on 
 August 29th, beginning a journey which the 
 personal reminiscences in this book recount. 
 
 The Commission brought back a report 
 which is the principal authority now in use in 
 the United States on the materiel and conduct 
 of anti-aircraft artillery. It is a most difficult 
 form of gunnery, as it involves the destruction 
 of targets moving with incredible speed and 
 rapidly changing position in three dimensions 
 of space at high altitudes. 
 
 The personnel of the Board has not disap- 
 pointed my choice. Major Stoddard, as Com- 
 manding Officer, performed his duties with 
 unusual ability. Captain Wilder, with his 
 engineering experience and technical skill, 
 obtained in a very short time exactly the infor- 
 mation desired, data which it would ordinarily 
 have taken a much longer time to collect. 
 Lieut. Cabot Ward with skill and tact over- 
 came difficulties and obstructions which with- 
 out his aid would have been insurmountable 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 and in all probability would have defeated the 
 purpose of the mission. 
 
 John Ross Delafield, 
 Colonel, Ninth Coast Artillery Corps, 
 New York Guard. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I We are Off 1 
 
 II Passengers and Submarines ... 11 
 
 III The Spy Barrier 17 
 
 IV En Route for Paris ..... 23 
 V Wartime in the French Capital . 29 
 
 IV General Pershing Sees Us Through 41 
 
 VII The Artillery School 49 
 
 VIII The Greatest Sport in the World . 55 
 
 IX In Mid-Channel 63 
 
 X London in Wartime 71 
 
 XI Air-Raids and Courage 79 
 
 XII With the British Batteries ... 91 
 
 XIII What to do in an Air Raid ... 99 
 
 XIV The Bravest of the Brave . . . 105 
 XV Americans with the Canadians . . 115 
 
 XVI On the Somme 119 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVII With "Byng of Cambrai'' .... 127 
 
 XVIII Stories from the Trenches ... 135 
 
 XIX The French Front on the Aisne . 143 
 
 XX Fighting at Chemin des Dames . . 153 
 
 XXI The Captain is Gassed . . . . 161 
 
 XXII What France Thinks 167 
 
 XXIII The Truth About German Atroci- 
 
 ties 175 
 
 XXIV The Enemy in the House . . . 187 
 XXV We Have Come . . . . ... 195 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 WE ARE OFF 
 
 It was midnight and the great port was 
 buried in darkness, when at last the bells 
 sounded for departure and we said good-bye to 
 those few of our friends who, after four days 
 of delay and uncertainty, had come down to 
 bid us farewell once more, and to see us safely 
 on our way to France. The mountainous piles 
 of cargo had been stowed aboard. A varied 
 group of military men and civilians was gath- 
 ered at the rail when the great ship, casting its 
 moorings, slipped out in silence and in dark- 
 ness to begin the perilous voyage through the 
 lurking submarine danger of the wartime 
 Atlantic. 
 
 There were three of us in the party, Captain 
 Wilder, Captain Ward and myself. We were 
 on our way to Europe to gather information 
 on the defence of American cities against 
 enemy aircraft. What has happened to Eng- 
 land can well be an object lesson to the United 
 States; and fortunately for America, there are 
 
2 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Army officers who are taking no chances. It 
 is thus that we received our opportunity to 
 render what service we could to our country in 
 the expedition upon which we were setting 
 forth. Our ship swung down the harbor. I 
 looked back at the towers and pinnacles of 
 Manhattan, silhouetted against the starry sky, 
 and offered up a prayer that our trip might 
 add one more stone to the wall of safety that 
 we are building around so dear and beautiful 
 a land. 
 
 We were sailing directly for France, and 
 our chances of being submarined were not 
 great. The line on which we were sailing had, 
 up to that time, been comparatively immune 
 from attack. There were many speculations as 
 to this immunity. Some said that the German 
 Emperor owned a large amount of stock in the 
 company. Some said that it was the Pope who 
 owned the stock, and still others believed that 
 Germany had used this line for sending her 
 spies back and forth across the Atlantic. 
 Whatever the reason may have been, the idea 
 was comforting. 
 
 As it was midnight when we sailed, we re- 
 tired promptly to our cabins to arrange for the 
 voyage. Captain Wilder is a skeptic, and 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 3 
 
 before he had unpacked his belongings he pro- 
 duced a tape-measure from one of his pockets 
 and carefully measured the port hole to see 
 whether, in case we were submarined, we 
 could escape by that route. He decided that 
 we could not, and while I am not a nervous 
 man, I confess to a qualm of misgiving at the 
 picture which he so vividly suggested of a 
 listed boat, sinking rapidly, a jammed door 
 and a porthole through which there could be 
 no escape. We had brought with us, at the 
 urgence of our friends, some very complete 
 and adequate life-preservers, but when morn- 
 ing came and we realized how many women 
 were on the passenger-list, we saw little chance 
 of wearing them in case of disaster. 
 
 That passenger-list was the most amazing 
 that I have ever seen on any ocean voyage. 
 There were uniforms of every hue and rank. 
 There were civilians, both men and women, of 
 every nationality and walk of life. No one is 
 allowed a passport in wartime, unless he has 
 an errand of great importance, and most of 
 the passengers were on some mission con- 
 nected with the war. Many of the civilians 
 appeared after the boat had sailed in the uni- 
 
4 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 forms of Red Cross officers of high rank. We 
 took them at first to be British officers. One 
 in the uniform of a Lieutenant-Colonel, I em- 
 barrassed greatly by saluting. I thought at 
 the time that it was inadvisable to give mili- 
 tary rank to Red Cross officers, but when we 
 arrived on the other side and I saw the amount 
 of '*red tape" that a uniform can obviate, I 
 appreciated the wisdom of so doing. 
 
 There were on board officers of several of 
 our Allied countries. There were some Amer- 
 icans on special missions to the front. There 
 were women in the neat dark uniforms of the 
 canteen worker, and there were a number of 
 men in the uniform of British privates, 
 who turned out to be American Ambulance 
 drivers. These men surprised us very much at 
 first by not saluting, but the mystery . was 
 solved on the second day out when one of their 
 number approached me, apologizing fpr the 
 unintentional discourtesy, and explained that 
 it was because none of them knew hpw to 
 salute. They asked me if I would be willing 
 to give them instruction, so, from two until 
 three-thirty every day, I drilled them in the 
 school of soldier, squad, and company, close 
 order. The life of these Ambulance men isras 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 5 
 
 by no means a bed of roses. There has been a 
 time when the American Ambulance drivers 
 have been criticized because they had spent 
 too much time in the bar, but there could be no 
 complaint of the conduct of the men on our 
 boat. From nine until ten-thirty they studied 
 French, from two until three-thirty I drilled 
 them, at eight o'clock in the evening a Red 
 Cross surgeon lectured to them on surgical 
 dressings, bandages and first aid. By bed- 
 time they were ready for sleep. 
 
 These American Ambulance Service men 
 have been among the best men sent over by 
 us during this war. At first there were young 
 college men who did not wish to give up their 
 citizenship by joining the army of another 
 nation, but who, nevertheless, felt called by the 
 wrongs of suffering humanity to do their "bit" 
 in the war. When we entered the war against 
 Germany most men of this type went to the 
 Officers' Training Camps, but there were 
 some who continued to enter the Ambulance 
 Service. Those on our boat were mostly men 
 wbo had been registered by the Army as 
 physically unfit, or married men, with fami- 
 lies, who did not feel that they could offer 
 their services for more than six months. Some 
 
6 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 of them hoped later to enter the French mili- 
 tary service where the physical standard is not 
 as high as in our own army, and where they 
 can become officers. 
 
 I am sorry to say that the experience of 
 many of these men, after their arrival in 
 France, was most unpleasant. The American 
 Ambulance service had advertised during the 
 summer for volunteers for service and enlist- 
 ments for six months. Many men with their 
 families dependent upon them for support had 
 arranged their business so they could be absent 
 for that time, but when they arrived in France 
 they were told that they must enter as privates 
 in the United States Medical Corps for the 
 duration of the war. Some did this, but others 
 preferred to return to America and try again 
 to enter a training camp, as not being medical 
 men, they would have little chance for ad- 
 vancement if they remained in that service. 
 
 As on every ocean voyage and in spite of the 
 submarine menace, there was much to enter- 
 tain and divert us. In order to raise money 
 for the wounded soldiers, a noted Italian 
 painter offered to do a portrait of the most 
 beautiful lady on board. It was decided to 
 take a vote of the passengers as to which lady 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 7 
 
 should be asked to sit for the picture. There 
 was a very charming young woman, a moving- 
 picture actress, on her way to fill an engage- 
 ment in Italy. Although she had been very 
 retiring and had avoided making promiscuous 
 acquaintances, it got rumored about that she 
 was going to try to win the prize. For a tin>2 
 the first cabin seethed with excitement. 
 Friends would not speak to each other as they 
 passed on deck. Factions sprang up for and 
 against the young woman. It was the sort of 
 situation that almost always arises when 
 strangers are kept together incommunicado for 
 some time. Of course the young lady with- 
 drew from the contest. But even so, the wrath 
 of the other passengers was not abated until 
 the ballots were counted and it was found that 
 she had received no votes whatever. The win- 
 ner of the contest was a negro nursemaid. It 
 added greatly to the gaiety of the rest of the 
 trip to watch the struggles of the poor artist 
 as he manfully tried to paint the ebony fea- 
 tures of "the most beautiful lady on board." 
 This same painter we found most intelligent.. 
 What he had to say about America and the 
 Americans interested us all very much. "Were 
 I not an Italian," he said, "I would like to be 
 
8 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 an American. I believe that the United States 
 will become eventually the greatest power in 
 the world, and history shows that such will be 
 the case. Power has gone constantly through 
 the ages to the new nations whose populations 
 come from mixed stocks to the west of what 
 was the old civilized world. For instance, 
 Greece was a new nation. Foreign stock came 
 to her, and from the mixture was evolved a 
 virile type of men who eventually dominated 
 the world. Then Italy was a new country to 
 the west. Greeks and men from all nations 
 went there and settled, and Rome conquered 
 the world. The mixture of races in Italy 
 evolved a virile type of men who brought 
 about the Renaissance that awoke the world in 
 the Middle Ages. When Rome was in power 
 Iberia was a new country to the west. She 
 was conquered and re-conquered and alien 
 races came, mixed and remained; and in the 
 Middle Ages, Spain was the greatest power in 
 the world. And now to the west of Europe, 
 the present center of the civilized world, is 
 the new western country, the United States, 
 settled by men of many races whose blood is 
 being mixed in their descendants, and now 
 that she is being awakened to the fact that she 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 9 
 
 can become a world power, it is only a 
 question of time when she will dominate the 
 earth." 
 
 Exactly opposite opinions were expressed by 
 a French Lieutenant who sat with us at the 
 Captain's table, where Captain Ward had ar- 
 ranged the seats for us. He delighted in con- 
 demning the United States and everything 
 American, and was particularly scathing on 
 the subject of American women. He insisted 
 that they had the worst manners in the world 
 because he had often seen them put salt and 
 pepper in soup without first tasting the soup. 
 This same Lieutenant used to appear at break- 
 fast in an entrancing pair of purple pajamas, 
 and his anger against American women was 
 not at all abated because some of the ladies on ^ 
 board asked hini to wear at least a bathrobe, 
 which he refused to do. Imagine our distress 
 upon arriving at the port, to discover that ^ 
 thie poor man was an invalid suffering severely 
 from shell shock and that his curious behavior, 
 at which we had laughed all the way over, was , 
 a manifestation of his mental trouble. That is 
 war : comedy and tragedy crowding each other - 
 side by side, some of the saddest situations • ; 
 being also some of the funniest. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PASSENGERS AND SUBMARINES 
 
 To SAY that we were not afraid of sub- 
 marines would be untrue and indeed unnat- 
 ural. Courage is not absence of fear, but the 
 overcoming of fear. It is a common saying in 
 the Army that there is something seriously 
 wrong with a soldier who is not frightened 
 during his first engagement. In a much lesser 
 degree this is also true of an ocean passage 
 through the submarine zone. We have all 
 heard of the atrocities committed by Germans 
 against merchant and passenger vessels. Be- 
 fore our trip I discounted most of these tales ; 
 after our stay abroad I believed them all, and 
 was ready to believe yet more. Each one of 
 the passengers wondered whether his state- 
 room was the most likely to be first struck and 
 what the sensation would be when the torpedo 
 arrived. We soon found from old ocean travel- 
 lers the secret of not being worried about sub- 
 marines ; it was just to forget all about them. 
 And yet one could not forget all about them, 
 
12 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 for evidences of expected attack were all 
 about. The life boats, loaded with casks of 
 water and provisions, swung out from their 
 davits ready to be lowered at a moment's 
 notice. Each passenger was assigned to a boat 
 and boat drills in life preservers were held. 
 At night, all ports were closed and dark cloths 
 prevented the light from companionways 
 being seen from without. The lighting of 
 matches and smoking on the decks was for- 
 bidden. During the last two nights passengers 
 were requested not to remove their clothes. 
 Many passengers slept all night on deck in 
 their chairs with life preservers next them. 
 The gun crews were ready by their uncovered 
 guns. 
 
 The third day out a lookout reported that 
 he saw a periscope and the ship started away 
 in the other direction, taking a zig-zag course. 
 Later a vessel passed in the distance but no 
 signals were exchanged. One day the smoke 
 of a vessel, going veryiast, was seen. Some 
 passengers said they could see firing through 
 their glasses. It was probably merely a sub- 
 marine chaser on its rou^qids. 
 
 We were told that at night came the most 
 danger; then the submarine comes to the sur- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE IS 
 
 face and watches for its victim. When the vic- 
 tim is located, the submarine submerges and, 
 going towards it, sinks it during the dim hours 
 of the early morning. In the submarine zone^ 
 however, all hours seem dangerous. The cap- 
 tain of the boat did not have much sympathy 
 for nervous people, however. To one anxious 
 lady who inquired whether he thought that the 
 vessel would be torpedoed by a submarine, he 
 answered, "Madame, I have a presentment 
 that we shall never reach port safely, and my 
 presentments always come true." 
 
 The most unpopular passenger on board for 
 a time was a moving-picture operator whose 
 specialty was to crawl out under fire and take 
 scenes of actual fighting on the battle field. It 
 was rumored among the passengers that he had 
 said he hoped the boat would be torpedoed and 
 sunk in order that he might get a picture of it 
 going down. He later denied that he wished 
 the boat would be sunk, but I found that when 
 he made his denial he had found that he could 
 not get his camera and film from the hold. 
 Whatever may be the true facts of the case, his 
 denial restored him to the favor of the other 
 passengers. 
 
 For excitement and the pleasure of the other 
 
14 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 passengers, the moving-picture actress and I 
 agreed to fall overboard on arrival in port, 
 with our patent life preservers, but alas! for 
 our dramatic plans, — the Captain refused to 
 allow it, giving as his reasons, first, that the 
 current would carry us out to sea ; second, that 
 the place was full of sharks, and, third, that 
 the boat would go away and leave us. One of 
 the ship's officers dryly suggested that the lady 
 and I test our life preservers in the bath tub. 
 
 There are three ways used by vessels to 
 avoid submarines; convoys, speed and faith. 
 The vessel upon which we were, trusted mainly 
 to the latter, for certainly speed was not one of 
 its qualities. Most of the passengers agreed 
 towards the end of the voyage that no convoy 
 was needed, for the Germans, out of respect 
 for old age, would certainly never waste a tor- 
 pedo on such an antiquated boat. 
 
 Few vessels going across the ocean take a 
 straight course. Some start as if they were go- 
 ing on an Arctic expedition, while others aim 
 for the equatorial climes; most combine both 
 trips during the voyage. It is no wonder that 
 the journey that formerly took an ocean liner 
 five days, is now strung out to anywhere from 
 nine to sixteen or more days. The submarine 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 15 
 
 menace is real, and ship captains appreciate it. 
 
 During the last days, no men in uniform 
 were permitted on deck. When two days from 
 our destination, a full-rigged sailing vessel 
 with three masts passed, going in the opposite 
 direction, and the hearts of all were glad that 
 she had found the way clear. Soon the exulta- 
 tion subsided, for we began to pass wreckage 
 and a life buoy. Late in the afternoon a war 
 vessel approached and cheers rang out as she 
 raised the French flag at her stern. After sig- 
 nalling vigorously, she kept on to sea in pur- 
 suit of a distant freighter. On the morning of 
 the last day, while most of the passengers were 
 writing letters telling that they had arrived 
 safely, our real trouble began. 
 
 It seems that three submarines had made 
 their way into a certain harbor and had sunk 
 two fishing vessels of the fishing fleet before 
 being driven to submerge by the submarine 
 chasers. Soon all the instrumentalities used 
 for locating and fighting submarines were in 
 action, and into the midst of the excitement our 
 venerable vessel calmly steamed. All about 
 our ship were submarine chasers watching 
 here, there and everywhere for the vanished 
 submarine. On the distant horizon other 
 
16 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 chasers could be seen dimly. Overhead aei^o- 
 planes were whirling round and round, as a 
 submarine can sometimes be seen very high in 
 the air when it cannot be seen from the Surface 
 of the water. High in the air at One side wis 
 a great dirigible balloon. When at last we 
 arrived in the harbor we learned that two 
 vessels just preceding us had been suhk, and 
 ■ the one just behind. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SPY BARRIER 
 
 The French system for guarding against 
 spies is extraordinarily efficient. I sincerely 
 trust that our own country has by this time 
 developed as good a one. No one is allowed 
 to land in France without a properly vised 
 passport, and no one is allowed to leave the 
 country without an equally careful checking 
 up of credentials. As we were carrying diplo- 
 matic passports, and as in dealing with gov- 
 ernment officials Captain Ward is one of the 
 cleverest men I have ever met, we had little 
 difficulty ourselves. Not so the other pas- 
 sengers, some of whom were not as discreet as 
 they should have been. 
 
 Once in the boat and during the trip, one is 
 apt to forget passports and their necessity. 
 Once during the voyage a woman wha 
 claimed to be American, entered into a violent: 
 tirade in my presence against Britain and the* 
 British. I suggested to her that Germany^ 
 might have attacked the United States long 
 
18 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 before, were it not for fear of Britain's inter- 
 ference. "Nonsense," she cried, "Germany 
 never intended to attack us." I told her that 
 I disagreed with her, and thereupon changed 
 the subject. I thought no more of this inci- 
 dent until we arrived in port. 
 
 Before the boat docked, officials boarded 
 and it was announced that passports would be 
 vised on the upper deck. It happened that we 
 were waiting our turn in line when the anti- 
 British lady presented her passport. It was 
 retained by one of the officials who told her to 
 sit down and wait. Later we learned that she 
 was made to disrobe in her stateroom and 
 everything she had was searched before she 
 was permitted to leave for her destination. It 
 was a good lesson to travellers whose loyalty 
 is not above reproach. 
 
 It is quite true that women make the most 
 dangerous spies, because they are hard to de- 
 tect in their work, and the United States, as 
 well as France and Britain, is undoubtedly 
 filled with women spies. It is a little hard to 
 understand the distinction that prevents the 
 Anglo-Saxon countries from executing women 
 spies. The French have no such scruples. On 
 all trains in the subways and in all public 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 19 
 
 gathering places all over France, there is 
 prominently displayed a sign 
 
 TAISSEZ VOUS. 
 
 MEFIEZ VOUS. 
 
 LES OREILLES ENEMI 
 
 VOUS ACCOUTENT. 
 Which means : "Take care, and look out. The 
 ears of the enemy hear you." It is a good sign 
 and a good rule, and might well be imitated 
 in America. 
 
 Our little friend, the moving-picture ac- 
 tress, nearly came to grief, because although 
 she was scheduled to go to Italy, she decided 
 that she would accept the invitation of friends 
 to spend a few days in Paris ; but when she an- 
 nounced her intentions at the port, her pass- 
 port was seized, and had she not promptly 
 reconsidered, the circumstances might have 
 been serious. 
 
 Everyone has heard the story of the English 
 family with a German nurse of many years 
 standing. One day the police called and said 
 they wished to search the nurse and her effects. 
 The family felt insulted and demanded that 
 such an outrage be not perpetrated. The police 
 persisted, and found in the nurse's trunk, plans 
 of all the neighboring forts, and other infor- 
 
20 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 mation of military value. I have heard this 
 story again and again. An Englishman told 
 me that it happened in his brother's family. 
 
 A rather amusing incident was related to 
 me in England. A wealthy young American 
 civilian of an old New York family, but with 
 a name that sounded German, arrived from 
 the United States, and visited some British 
 artillery officers in England. As he was about 
 to go to Paris, they asked him if he would con- 
 vey certain military papers to an American 
 general stationed there. He, of course, con- 
 sented, and started for France with the papers. 
 Because of his name and the fact that he was 
 a civilian, he was at once an object of sus- 
 picion wherever he went. When trying to 
 take a channel boat, he and his effects were 
 searched and the military papers found. It 
 required a lot of explaining and verifying to 
 prevent his incarceration as a spy, and the 
 result was the reprimanding of the British 
 officers, for entrusting military papers to a 
 civilian. 
 
 There is no possibility of remaining long in 
 France without the proper credentials. All 
 aliens must be registered; and if they are 
 civilians, must obtain permission from the 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 21 
 
 Chief of Police, to live in any given place, and 
 must report themselves to the authorities at 
 least once a month. And one cannot move 
 from one town to another without permission. 
 This is also true in England. An American 
 lady living outside of London, told me that 
 when she wished to go to London to shop she 
 had first to register in her own village, then 
 register in London, and then once more in her 
 own village after she had returned. 
 
 The United States has a very good passport 
 system, but its system of keeping track of 
 aliens and especially of alien enemies needs 
 development. A French officer told me at the 
 front, that formerly hardly a movement was 
 made by the French troops but that the 
 Germans knew of it in advance. In France, 
 a spy caught at the front does not have to 
 wait long to learn his fate. Long before this 
 war began Germany had her spies in every 
 rival country, who worked to undermine the 
 allegiance of the people to their own govern- 
 ment, and to spread German propaganda. It 
 is now believed by those who know, that the 
 distrust for the United States planted in 
 Mexico and Japan was done by German spies 
 and propagandists. This country will go a 
 
22 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 long way towards handling the spy question, 
 when it gives them the fair but short trial and 
 quick punishment meted out by France. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EN ROUTE FOR PARIS 
 
 The sun was setting as our steamer sailed 
 majestically into the great harbor that marks 
 the mouth of the beautiful river. We had left 
 our low-lying, battle-gray convoys at the 
 mouth of the harbor and the hum of aero- 
 planes began to fade in the distance. No mat- 
 ter how greatly one loves the sea, the first 
 glimpse of land, after a long voyage, has about 
 it a touch of fairyland. How much more so in 
 these tragic days, when the inevitable fear and 
 tension of the submarine menace is at last over 
 and the anxious traveller realizes that he has 
 crossed the danger zone and has reached a 
 friendly shore. 
 
 The water at the mouth of the wide river 
 is an unearthly light green, caused by the 
 translucent muddy water of the river mixed 
 with the deep green of the sea. On this clear 
 and curiously transparent water there floated 
 hundreds of little fishing smacks, each with 
 its colored sail set out to dry in the evening 
 
24 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 breezes. Red and yellow, and blue and 
 purple and white, they were dotted over the 
 clear green water, lit up by the rays of the set- 
 ting sun. As our boat steamed up the river, 
 we felt again that ever-blooming and dauntless 
 charm of France, which no wars can destroy 
 and no enemy desecrate. The willows dipped 
 their green leaves along the reed-bordered 
 shore. French houses with their long win- 
 dows stood in their ancient fields. Peasant 
 women could be seen in the distance tilling the 
 soil, and little boats paddled up and down 
 among the garden-like islands. 
 
 The streets of the ancient seaport town are 
 filled with soldiers and, like every other town 
 in France, with women in the quiet black of 
 many bereavements. There were some fine 
 looking American soldiers who saluted as we 
 passed. They were engineers, and I was not 
 surprised to learn that many of them were 
 college men. Some of the best troops we have 
 sent abroad have been our engineers. 
 
 Aside from the usual aspect of troops about 
 the streets, the city shows little signs of war. 
 After an excellent dinner at the hotel, the three 
 of us set out to see the city. Because many 
 motor vehicles had been taken by the army 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 25 
 
 authorities, the supply of horse-eabs and motor- 
 cabs are far less than the demand. The best 
 way to get a cab in France, is to rush up hastily, 
 grab the horse, thereby stopping the vehicle, 
 and jump at once into the cab, shouting out the 
 name of your destination. If a taxi-cab man 
 tries to argue, a wise traveller steps up and 
 turns down the flag, thereby turning the meter 
 and registering a fare, and at once jumps in- 
 side. These methods always succeed unless a 
 second traveller rushes up and whispers a glit- 
 tering promise into the driver's ear. In that 
 case, the first occupant is pulled bodily out of 
 the cab. Captain Ward, however, is an expert 
 liaison officer, and we did not have to resort 
 to such strenuous tactics. As we took our 
 seats we noticed an American woman chauf- 
 feur standing beside her car. She was dressed 
 like an American private soldier with her hair 
 cut short, and my eyes had been resting upon 
 her for several moments before I realized that 
 she was a woman. The French have tried to 
 use women as chauffeurs for taxi-cabs, but for 
 some reason they have not been successful. 
 
 We took the first train for Paris, and with 
 one American civilian, we had made ourselves 
 comfortable, when the door flew open and 
 
26 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 three French ladies in mourning, a mother and 
 her two daughters, approached. Captain 
 Ward, true to his sense of duty, shouted that 
 our carriage was full, but the mother came up 
 to the door and with a charming manner and 
 in a beautifully modulated voice, explained 
 that her husband had lost his life in the army 
 and that one of her daughters was going to 
 Paris to meet her husband who was on leave 
 for a few days. The mother was in despair at 
 the thought of allowing her daughter to travel 
 alone, as French girls and young women are 
 very carefully chaperoned. She begged us to 
 see that her daughter arrived safely in Paris. 
 Of course this story melted our hearts, and we 
 gave the girl a seat in our compartment. After 
 the train had started, she explained to us why 
 her mother had been so insistent. It seems that 
 from a wide knowledge of the world, her 
 mother had decided that Russian officers were 
 impossible, that English officers sometimes 
 were nice and sometimes were not, that French 
 officers were none too safe, but that she was will- 
 ing to trust her daughter anywhere alone with 
 any American. We were not quite sure whether 
 we ought to be flattered or not, but we did our 
 best to make the trip a comfortable one. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 27 
 
 One of us had a naughty French comic 
 paper, and I was holding it in my hands when 
 the lady got in. In somewhat of a quandary 
 as to the proper thing to do under the circum- 
 stances, I offered it to her before reading it 
 myself. She thanked me and said that she had 
 already read it, and imagine my horror when 
 I opened the paper and found it full of pic- 
 tures such as the American public would never 
 allow in print. "Do you mean to say that you 
 read such a paper," I asked her in surprise. 
 "Oh, not in public," she answered, "my hus- 
 band or my brother send them home to me." 
 
 We rolled on through the beautiful chateau 
 region in France that lies between our port 
 and Paris, the great estates of the French 
 nobility and the charming villages of the 
 French peasants. It seemed as peaceful and 
 as undisturbed as though wars had gone out of 
 existence, with the departure of the British 
 yeomen, armed with bows and arrows, who 
 had once attacked the chateaux on all the hills. 
 But in the fields there were many stalwart 
 men gathering in the crops with a curiously 
 unenthusiastic air. They were German prison- 
 ers, still in their German uniforms and under 
 French guard. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WARTIME IN THE FRENCH CAPITAL 
 
 To ONE who has not seen Paris since the gay 
 days before the war, the face of the most beau- 
 tiful of cities is sadly changed. And yet not 
 so changed after all. The streets are filled with 
 people and while the men are in uniform and 
 all the women in black, there is still the air of 
 indomitable gaiety which characterizes the 
 Latin races. I sometimes think that the dififer- 
 ence between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin 
 is that the English-speaking races are so opti- 
 mistic about life itself that they do not feel the 
 need for gaiety, and they look upon the joyous- 
 ness of other countries as a kind of swank, 
 whereas the Latin, being gifted with imagina- 
 tion, realizes fully the fundamental sadness of 
 the world and insists upon gaiety as the only 
 means for making life livable from day to day. 
 When the war first broke out, Paris was 
 plunged in grief, and underneath the surface 
 there still runs a deep river of sorrow, but the 
 brave people have rallied their spirits and the 
 
30 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 life along the streets moves on as heretofore. 
 
 The crowds along the Boulevard are one of 
 the most amazing sights the world has ever 
 seen. The black in which the women are 
 clothed is not so somber as in 1915. There was 
 a time when every woman who had lost a rela- 
 tive in the war, even to second and third 
 cousins, was swathed in crepe. The effect was 
 so lugubrious that the French Government has 
 passed a law that heavy mourning can be worn 
 for only a few days after the funeral. Never- 
 theless, most of the civilian population is in 
 dark clothing. Mingled with the crowd are 
 many wounded young men without arms or 
 legs, limping men, blind men, men mangled 
 and maimed in every possible way; all in uni- 
 form and all a sacrifice to German aggression. 
 Many of them wore the Croix de Guerre, and 
 sometimes also the ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honor, the highest award for bravery granted 
 the French soldiers. Unlike the Americans, 
 the French wear their medals with their field 
 service uniforms. At first sight this is con- 
 fusing to an American. As we walked down 
 the street on our first day in Paris, we met a 
 large man with a row of medals running 
 across his breast. I took him for a Colonel, at 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 31 
 
 least, and saluted. He looked surprised, and 
 as we waited on the corner for the traffic to 
 pass, I spoke to him, explaining that I was a 
 stranger. He smiled again and, saluting 
 politely, informed me that he was a Second 
 Lieutenant. The French custom of wearing 
 chevrons is confusing. A chevron on the right 
 arm indicates wounds, and on the left arm, one 
 chevron for each six months of service after 
 the first year. To an uninformed American, 
 a French officer whose chevron showed that he 
 had received two wounds and had served a 
 year and a half in the army would appear to 
 be a Corporal. Non-commissioned officers 
 are indicated by stripes placed at an angle on 
 the cuff of the coat sleeve. 
 
 Soldiers of every allied nation were stroll- 
 ing about the streets of Paris. The English 
 are splendid, manly looking men. The Scotch, 
 in their kilts, are the special delight of the 
 French crowds. The Irish and the Welsh were 
 distinguished from the English by their regi- 
 mental designations. The crowds are extraor- 
 dinarily sober and law-abiding in spite of their 
 cosmopolitan character and the fact that most 
 of them were soldiers on leave. There was a 
 time when an occasional British soldier 
 
32 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 or an American Ambulance man was found 
 drunk, but that was probably because it is 
 always hard to adjust one's self to the customs 
 of a foreign country. There is a freedom and 
 an air of joy in Paris which a young American 
 sometimes misunderstands. I was talking to a 
 French officer one day at a little table in front 
 of one of the big restaurants and two Ameri- 
 can boys entered. They were behaving in a 
 manner not too discreet, and my French friend 
 looked at them with a mingling of amazement 
 and pity. "Alas!" he said, "It is only too true 
 that people like the Russians and the Ameri- 
 cans are confused by their first contact with 
 civilization." The French have indeed a right 
 to be proud. No one has questioned their emi- 
 nence in making life comfortable and happy in 
 little ways, and they have proved themselves 
 heroic, even beyond their own dreams. If that 
 is civilization, let us have more of it. 
 
 Belgian soldiers were everywhere; in fact, 
 next to the French, it seemed as if there were 
 more than of the soldiers of any other nation. 
 There are many Russians about in their curi- 
 ous green uniforms, remnants of the Russian 
 Army which is now fighting in France. They 
 were smaller men than I had expected. I 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 33 
 
 think one forms one's opinion of Russian 
 stature by pictures of the Grand Dukes. There 
 were Portuguese, there were Canadians, Aus- 
 tralians and New Zealanders. With their en- 
 thusiasm, their excellent carriage and their 
 kindly faces, they give the impression that 
 England has a right to be proud of her Col- 
 onies. There were Algerians, wearing a fez, 
 the badge of a believer in Islam. There were 
 Arabs with white mantles, there were Sene- 
 galese, fierce, powerful negroes from North- 
 ern Africa, black as our own darkies, with a 
 curious metallic look to their skins, and there 
 were Annamites, whom I first took to be Japs, 
 Perhaps our men were at first somewhat lack- 
 ing in military courtesy, but this is not surpris- 
 ing. When an army is gathered together in a 
 hurry, the men are not expected to have the 
 military bearing of veterans. When we en- 
 tered the war regiments were expanded by an 
 influx of new recruits, and often the new men 
 outnumbered the older men. OflScers were 
 sent abroad with only a few months' military 
 training, and many officers and men with no 
 military training at all, because they were 
 specialists and were needed for some duty 
 back of the lines. However, that is all being 
 
34 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 changed; even semi-civilians like Y. M. C. A. 
 men, are being instructed in the school of the 
 soldier. 
 
 If an American going to any French city 
 wears an old uniform because of the war, he 
 will find himself sadly out of place. French 
 and English officers are immaculate. All 
 American officers, unless provided with one, 
 buy a Sam Brown belt as soon as they arrive in 
 Paris. This belt is copied from the British 
 and serves no special purpose. It is meant 
 for nothing except looks and it distinguishes 
 officers from enlisted i men. The French 
 limit its use to officers of regiments who have 
 seen active service at the front. General Per- 
 shing at first decreed that American officers 
 must wear campaign hats to distinguish them 
 from officers of other armies. This hat 
 caused the French much amusement, and sev- 
 eral people asked me if it were true, that the 
 Americans could afiford only one hat. British 
 officers carry canes, but Americans do not. 
 Theoretically, a cane is for use on horses, but 
 some of the French canes have ferrules, some 
 have balls of lead for a handle, as a black-jack 
 has, and others look like nothing so much as a 
 club. The American uniform is becoming 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 35 
 
 highly popular in the streets of Paris. When- 
 ever we stopped at a shop window we at- 
 tracted a crowd of admiring solders and civil- 
 ians. They have waited so long for us to come, 
 they have suffered so much themselves in de- 
 fence of freedom, and they have always looked 
 upon us with so much friendliness, that now 
 that we have come, heart and soul, and good 
 right fist, they are delighted. I am sure that 
 the courage of our men in the more recent 
 troubles has not diminished their ardor. 
 
 The food in Paris is bountiful, although 
 plenty of travellers returning to the United 
 States, have told some tall stories about the 
 lack of provisions in Paris, but I think the 
 stories come, probably, from a desire to be 
 dramatic, and not from a reverence for the 
 truth. The French are husbanding their re- 
 sources, but there is plenty of food for all. 
 There is no white bread, but the black bread 
 used as a substitute was excellent, and many 
 people liked it better than the white. Wines 
 are abundant, though increasing in price. 
 White sugar was plentiful in hotels, although 
 the rules of buying limit its use in private 
 houses. Brown sugar is used as a substitute. 
 Except during the winter, there are meatless 
 
36 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 days, when omelets and other substitutes are 
 eaten. There are no meatless days, nor sugar- 
 less days, nor wheatless days in the army. The 
 men in service are well fed, whether they be 
 French, British or American. Perhaps it will 
 be a pleasure to many careful and patriotic 
 housewives to know, that so far, their efforts 
 have been amply rewarded. 
 
 There was an attempt to save coal in Paris. 
 As a result, buildings are heated very poorly, 
 if heated at all, and the hotels are allowed to 
 have hot water only on Saturdays and Sundays. 
 As there are none too many bath-tubs in Paris 
 at best, guests who are amply able to pay any 
 reasonable sum for accommodations could be 
 seen standing in line in the corridors for a 
 chance for a bath. The elevators take pas- 
 sengers up, but not down. 
 
 The conscription of all able-bodied men 
 from nineteen to forty-eight years of age has 
 caused a large influx of Spanish, Swiss and 
 other neutrals to take the positions left vacant 
 by the French, There has been some com- 
 plaint of this by French labor, but it seemed 
 to be the best solution. Every possible position 
 is filled by women. A woman carries your 
 trunk from station to cab, another acts as clerk 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 37 
 
 at a hotel when you arrive, they are motormen 
 on the street cars, they do all the work of the 
 stores, they manufacture most of the muni- 
 tions, they operate the subway, as ticket sellers, 
 ticket takers and guards. In the country they 
 go out into the fields and bring in the crops. 
 When the war is over and its story is told, his- 
 tory will give one of her chief chapters to the 
 heroic women of France. 
 
 The blue dusk of Paris was settling down 
 over the city, softening the outlines of her 
 beautiful old buildings and adding the last 
 note of romance to the cosmopolitan crowds, 
 as we set out from our hotel for our first din- 
 ner in this most picturesque of all cities. We 
 wandered across the Place de la Concord, as 
 the night came on. There was a full moon 
 shining on the river and there were almost no 
 lights in the city. No one who has not seen 
 Paris under the reign of terror, caused by the 
 Boche air-raids can have any conception of the 
 extraordinary change wrought on her beauti- 
 ful and ancient monuments. There are many 
 buildings in Paris, built in the middle ages, 
 which were lighted only by a few flaring 
 torches. No one who has seen the Con- 
 ciergerie or the old Cathedral, only lit up by 
 
38 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 modern incandescent lamps, can have the least 
 conception of their true proportions, and their 
 wonderful charm in the pitch dark of modern 
 Paris. These old buildings stand out against 
 the moon-lit sky exactly as they stood when 
 knights in armor and all the pageantry of the 
 Medieval Church passed through their por- 
 tals. As we walked along the shore of the 
 river, it seemed impossible to believe that this 
 was Paris of the twentieth century, and that 
 we were American officers on our way to 
 dinner. 
 
 We wandered into an unostentatious restau- 
 rant on the left side of the river. It was one 
 of those charming spots, simple, quiet and un- 
 obtrusive, where there are no prices on the 
 bill-of-fare, and your bill can be almost any- 
 thing. As the Captain remarked, "The sky is 
 the limit." We had a delicious meal, but it 
 was rather disturbed by the fact that the 
 waiters were so excited over the advent of 
 American officers, that they stood around us in 
 circles, watching us eat, like animals in the 
 zoo. It was before American officers were a 
 common sight in Paris, and we were hailed 
 everywhere as the vanguard of the great army 
 that was to deliver Paris. The waiter who 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 39 
 
 served our steak was young and enthusiastic 
 and he picked up a morsel with such a flourish 
 that it flew out of his grasp and struck me 
 squarely in the chest. I had had tender steaks 
 before, but never one that had showed a desire 
 to kiss me. Some Englishmen at a near-by 
 table were highly amused, but the proprietor 
 almost died of mortification and followed us 
 all the way out on the quay, protesting volubly. 
 Back we went to our hotel through the 
 moon-lit city. I have seen Paris under many 
 guises, under the chestnut trees in one of the 
 gayest of its many gay springtimes, during the 
 tourist season, when Americans were gathered 
 here on a very different mission, and during 
 her short and gloomy winter days, when the 
 great world of continental Europe was making 
 merry along the Boulevards, but I have never 
 seen the city with such charm and such alto- 
 gether irresistible beauty as broods over her 
 today. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GENERAL PERSHING SEES US THROUGH 
 
 No FIGURE in the world today is more fasci- 
 nating or more impressive than that of General 
 Pershing. No man commands the enthusiasm 
 of the civilized world more completely. The 
 General who will lead our troops to victory 
 stands first in the hearts of all America ; and 
 next to her own beloved commander, first in 
 the hearts of France. Our Commission car- 
 ried letters to General Pershing, which it was 
 necessary to present in person. We inquired 
 of the various Americans whom we met as to 
 the whereabouts of the General's Headquar- 
 ters. We could get no information except 
 that he was not in Paris. When we finally 
 were informed by ofiicial sources of the where- 
 abouts of Headquarters, we were told that it 
 was a profound secret and warned about 
 divulging our knowledge to anyone, but to our 
 great amusement, we soon found that almost 
 everyone on the street seemed to know where 
 the General was. On remarking, casually, to 
 
42 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 a French officer, that we were going to Head- 
 quarters within a few days, he replied, "Oh, 
 yes, you are going to X, but I understand that 
 the General has gone to Y for the day." Our 
 pride in being intrusted with secret informa- 
 tion was greatly diminished. 
 
 The next day we all three set out for the 
 General's Headquarters. The train was filled 
 with soldiers returning from leave, and going 
 to the general portion of the French front 
 where the Americans have since "gone in." 
 General Headquarters is in a beautiful French 
 town in a lovely undulating country, much 
 better for the health and happiness of our men 
 than Paris. I learned it has been since ar- 
 ranged that our armies are not to be given 
 leave to go to Paris, a very wise precaution 
 considering the dangers and temptations of a 
 great foreign city. After the proper arrange- 
 ments had been made by Captain Ward, and 
 we had been duly presented to Pershing's 
 Chief of Staff, we were ushered into the pres- 
 ence of the man who is making history for 
 America and for the world. The General was 
 sitting before a wide table in a room from 
 which every unnecessary stick of furniture 
 had been removed, and which had much of 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 43 
 
 the appearance of a modern city office. The 
 General is a tall man over six feet in height^ 
 with a square chin and a large jaw. His eyes 
 are clear and penetrating and everything 
 about him suggests force, intelligence and 
 splendid courage. He rose and greeted us 
 with a beaming smile as we entered and in- 
 stead of returning our salute extended his 
 hand. He had evidently confused us with a 
 well known Artillery Corps of Boston, for 
 his first remark was, "Well, gentlemen, you 
 don't look very ancient, but you may be hon- 
 orable — I hope you are." He seated us and 
 he asked many questions in rapid succession, 
 and with extraordinary penetration and clar- 
 ity. He gave attention to the importance and 
 standing of our commission. The instant he 
 started with the necessary instructions, Cap- 
 tain Ward pulled a note-book from his pocket 
 and asked the General to lend him a pencil, 
 and sinking on his shoulder blades carefully 
 compiled the General's directions. 
 
 If I am any judge of character. General 
 Pershing will do all and more than is expected 
 of him. His hold over the army is wonderful 
 and he is a strict disciplinarian. Often he has 
 personally corrected officers and men for 
 
44 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 violating military rules, but he is always just, 
 and the men have faith in him. He looks like 
 a soldier, acts like a soldier, and will undoubt- 
 edly turn the splendid material that we are 
 sending to him into one of the best armies in 
 the world. The men on sentry duty who 
 saluted us as we left General Headquarters 
 were the same Marines who have since dis- 
 tinguished themselves so gloriously in recent 
 battles. There were many young conscripts 
 scattered among our men. They were lungeing 
 fiercely at imaginary German enemies and 
 parrying hostile thrusts. Others were build- 
 ing practice target posts in the trees and their 
 work was extremely good. 
 
 On the way back to Paris we had another 
 amusing experience of travelling in France. 
 The train was filled with men on leave, offi- 
 cers in their best uniforms, many of them 
 with bandages, and exhausted men in the vesti- 
 bules lying against their heavy packs. In 
 France, officers go first class, ordinary French 
 civilians usually go second class, laborers and 
 private soldiers go third class, but all Ameri- 
 cans, whatever their rank, treat themselves to 
 a first class seat. 
 
 Our compartment was filled. There were 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 45 
 
 six seats, three of which were occupied by our 
 party, the fourth by an American Major, the 
 fifth by a Frenchman assigned as an inter- 
 preter by the American Army, and the sixth, 
 in a corner beside the door, by a French Cap- 
 tain. As the interpreter said that he did not 
 intend to eat on the train, we four American 
 officers asked him to watch our seats while we 
 dined in the dining car. He consented, and 
 we left him. When we returned, after dining, 
 we found the interpreter alone in the com- 
 partment except for a French lady, sitting in 
 the French Captain's seat. The interpreter 
 stated that he had explained to people who 
 tried to enter our compartment that the seats 
 were engaged, but that the lady in the corner 
 had insisted on entering and taking the seat of 
 the French Captain, who had followed us to 
 the dining car. All went well until the Cap- 
 tain returned. He told the lady that of course 
 he would not suggest her returning to him his 
 seat, which she should do; that he would be 
 obliged to stand all the way back to Paris, 
 when he really had a seat; that she really 
 ought to return what she had so rudely taken, 
 but that he did not intend to suggest it. The 
 lady, in turn, obviously without any intention 
 
46 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 of really doing so, offered to return him his 
 seat, but carefully refrained from giving the 
 Captain an opportunity of taking advantage of 
 her offer. The Captain said he did not really 
 care for the seat, but no real lady would ever 
 take a seat under such cimcumstances, and the 
 conversation continued at length, the Captain 
 saying he didn't wish to have the seat, when 
 he really did, while the lady offered it to him 
 but without the least intention of letting him 
 have it. The Captain left after an interminable 
 discussion, only to return and continue the 
 same thing for about twenty minutes longer. 
 At the end of this period he left and once more 
 we all breathed in peace. Finally he returned 
 the third time and demanded that the inter- 
 preter give up his seat, which the latter 
 refused to do. He had arrived at the point 
 where he, as a captain, was ordering the inter- 
 preter, as a private, to give up his seat, when I 
 told him that he could have my seat, where- 
 upon I crowded in with the other American 
 officers and left my seat vacant. His manner 
 changed at once. He said that I could not be 
 serious, and he departed not to return. 
 
 When the train arrived in Paris, we were 
 greeted by one of the most touching sights I 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 47 
 
 have ever seen. As the procession wended its 
 way along the platform from the train, there 
 gathered about the entrance, in the station 
 through which the passengers must come, a 
 large crowd of anxious-faced women, waiting 
 for these fighters from the front, waiting, per- 
 haps, for a husband, son or brother. And 
 when they saw him, there would be glad cries, 
 and a little black figure would be clasped by a 
 larger blue figure, and the two would go forth 
 from the station, his arm perhaps about her 
 waist, and both utterly oblivious to the fact 
 that the world was going on about them and 
 that France was at war. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ARTILLERY SCHOOL 
 
 In an old French chateau in a charming 
 agricultural village, set amid the rolling fields 
 of northern France, the anti-aircraft school 
 was situated. When we arrived, this school 
 was just being set up, and it was there that we 
 were sent from general headquarters, to make 
 our investigations into anti-aircraft artillery. 
 America probably knew less at that time about 
 the defense of its own cities than any other 
 civilized country. Thanks to the officers in 
 charge of the school, and thanks to Captain 
 Wilder's helpful work in co-operation with 
 them, the American Government has now that 
 information. 
 
 When the United States officers first arrived 
 they were authorized to hire quarters, and they 
 promptly hired the chateau, a beautiful build- 
 ing set in extensive grounds and brooding over; 
 a little French village with narrow streets,, 
 children playing in the roadway, and soldiers, 
 sitting on the door-steps. The French officers^ 
 
50 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 connected with this school, not wishing to be 
 out-done by the Americans, promptly requi- 
 sitioned all the chateau not in use by them. 
 The chateau had belonged to Louis XV, King 
 of France, and was built around a court and 
 surrounded by broad terraces extending the 
 width of the building. These terraces swept 
 down in stately procession to a small river 
 which flowed out at one end of the garden into 
 a little lake. Wide lawns stretched away from 
 the house in every direction, an old rustic 
 bridge, tall, well-kept hedges and all the other 
 surroundings of an ancient, royal estate, gave 
 the place such charm and beauty, such dignity 
 and repose, that modern warfare seemed 
 almost an impertinence beside it. And yet, in 
 the little village, many French soldiers, in the 
 horizon blue of France, sat basking in the thin 
 sunshine, and in all the fields, so peaceful 
 under the summer sky, the brave peasant 
 women of France were gathering in the crops. 
 And all through the fields, as far as the eye 
 could reach, were the remains of French 
 trenches, dug by the French, when the Ger- 
 mans were on their way to Paris, already cov- 
 ered with young grass and rapidly becoming a 
 part of the ancient landscape. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 51 
 
 Inside the chateau, the walls were hung 
 with mellow old tapestries and with portraits 
 of men in armor. The furniture was that used 
 by the French nobility two hundred years ago. 
 Beautifully-painted tables of the period of 
 Louis XV, stood against the walls, and beside 
 them were pine tables from America, upon 
 which lay the military maps of France. As 
 night settled down over the countryside, the 
 moon rose behind the poplar trees, and as mid- 
 night approached, we heard in the silent air, 
 the voice of a nightingale singing in the rose 
 garden, and then a boyish laugh and the voice 
 of young America raised in a bantering good- 
 night. 
 
 In this chateau had been stationed two 
 American Captains, West Point and Annap- 
 olis, experts in artillery. They were busy 
 preparing an artillery school for the instruc- 
 tion of young American officers in anti-air- 
 craft fighting. Captain Wilder was promptly 
 urged to assist in the establishment of this 
 school, and he remained with them for several 
 weeks, compiling his report and lending his 
 assistance in organizing the school. This 
 school has since instructed scores of Amer- 
 
52 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 icans in the difficult art of anti-aircraft 
 artillery. 
 
 No branch of the military game is more 
 interesting than anti-aircraft artillery. Even 
 as the role of aircraft grows more and more 
 important, so must the science of circumvent- 
 ing the aircraft be studied with equal care. 
 All students of the subject agree that the for- 
 eign armies have not yet begun to use the tre- 
 mendous possibilities that fighting in the air 
 will develop. Britain has made land tanks, 
 which are moving forts, and are impervious to 
 anything except direct hits by armor-piercing 
 projectiles from high-powered guns. Why can 
 we not have flying tanks which will be much 
 harder to hit and which will fly over all 
 obstructions and attack the enemy from above? 
 In back of the lines, aircraft can be equally 
 useful. After watching long lines of wagons 
 loaded with supplies, painfully plodding 
 through the mud or dust of a Texas summer 
 and fall, one wonders, for transportation 
 of wounded, for every purpose that involves 
 the moving of anything, why not use the air? 
 
 Away from the battle line, away in our 
 home cities near the coast, what is to prevent 
 hostile aircraft, as at present constructed, from 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 53 
 
 dropping bombs on our homes? Some vague, 
 but growing realization, of the increasing pos- 
 sibilities of aircraft attack, combined with a 
 desire to be useful, caused me first to become 
 interested in anti-aircraft artillery. 
 
 It was in the fall of 1916, after I had 
 returned from the Mexican border, that I first 
 had an opportunity of studying the problem of 
 defending American cities from aircraft 
 attack. It was remarkable how little was 
 known in this country at that time about the 
 subject. No manuals were available, and the 
 men with whom I associated were forced to 
 get practically all their information from 
 British and French ofBcers, none of whom 
 were very up-to-date in their knowledge. 
 No one permitted himself to get discouraged, 
 for all firmly believed that the great war in 
 Europe made it clear that all the cities in the 
 United States, near the seaboard, were liable 
 to attack from hostile aircraft, and would 
 surely be attacked when Germany once made 
 up its mind that it wished to punish us as it is 
 trying to punish England. We read that 
 Brigadier-General Squier, formerly in charge 
 of the aircraft of the United States Army, had 
 testified before the house Committee on Mili- 
 
54 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 tary AfBairs, that an enemy ship could lie off 
 three hundred miles from the City of New 
 York, and could easily send a number of flying 
 machines to raid the city. It was also shown, 
 by foreign experts, that a large number of sub- 
 marines had been built by Germany for the 
 express purpose of carrying hydroplanes to 
 attack distant cities. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE GREATEST SPORT IN THE WORLD 
 
 I WONDER how many people think of anti- 
 aircraft fighting as something which greatly 
 resembles partridge shooting. How many 
 believe that an anti-aircraft gun is aimed at 
 the approaching aeroplane much as a shot-gun 
 is aimed at a bird on the wing? Nothing could 
 be further from the truth. The target of an 
 anti-aircraft gun is a point moving perhaps a 
 hundred miles an hour many thousand feet in 
 the air, and with the ability to turn and twist 
 in any direction with great rapidity. Anti- 
 aircraft artillery is, therefore, one of the most 
 exact of all military sciences. I remember 
 falling into error myself one time when I 
 depicted to a number of possible recruits, the 
 excitement of dashing at full speed through 
 the streets of a bombed city with an anti-air- 
 craft gun mounted on an automobile and firing 
 as we rode. Of course, such procedure is 
 utterly impossible, and if American cities are 
 to be defended against hostile aircraft, they 
 
56 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 must be outfitted according to the latest Euro- 
 pean method. To get this was the purpose of 
 our mission, and all three of us felt rather like 
 **Babes in the Woods," when we found, on our 
 arrival at the general headquarters, just what 
 our problems were to be, although we had 
 been picked for the job because of our sup- 
 posed knowledge of anti-aircraft artillery. 
 
 The use of anti-aircraft artillery in the 
 defence of cities is a problem differing from 
 its use along the firing line, although in the 
 case of a city like Paris, the anti-aircraft artil- 
 lery along the front is obviously, the first line 
 of defence. So few enemy planes get by the 
 anti-aircraft artillery in the trenches, that the 
 worst of the problem has been solved before it 
 becomes necessary to defend the city proper. 
 Paris is an inland city, and before a German 
 plane or planes can attack it they must cross 
 the firing lines at night or above the clouds and 
 escape detection by the anti-aircraft batteries. 
 If they are seen, the information is promptly 
 reported to the rear and the defenders of the 
 city are ready before they arrive and planes 
 are sent up to oppose them. Back of the actual 
 front there are watching stations distributed 
 through various parts of France, whose busi- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 57 
 
 ness is to report planes that escape the notice 
 of the guns at the firing line, and in case a 
 fleet eludes both of these, it will be detected 
 and intercepted by the airplanes, which are 
 constantly patrolling the air above Paris. 
 Thus, in order for an airplane to attack Paris, 
 it must pass three lines of defence. This is 
 known as depth of defence and is of prime 
 importance in defending an area or a city. 
 
 A seaport, on the other hand, such as Lon- 
 don or our own coast cities, presents an entirely 
 different problem. The only way to warn the 
 city of an approaching enemy esquadrille is 
 by means of a fleet at sea, because by the time 
 the airplanes have arrived at the coast or har- 
 bor, there is no time to make preparations for 
 intercepting them. The best way to guard 
 against aircraft attack on such cities is by 
 means of other airplanes. In order to make 
 such a defence effective, it is necessary to 
 install a system of signals between patrol boats 
 and the shore and to place watching stations 
 in the other three directions to prevent planes 
 from crossing a neighboring frontier and 
 approaching the city from the landward side. 
 It must be remembered that the speed of an 
 airplane being nearly three times that of a 
 
58 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 fast train, a frontier many miles away may be 
 useful as a starting point for enemy aircraft. 
 
 The French cities suffered from air attack 
 during the early part of the war. In Septem- 
 ber, 1914, a German aeroplane visited Paris 
 nearly every day, and dropped insulting mes- 
 sages on the population. Every civilian who 
 possessed fire-arms rushed into the streets and 
 began shooting in the direction of the heavens. 
 The result can well be imagined. How much 
 damage was done will never be known in 
 detail. I once asked a French captain what 
 proportion of casualties during an air-raid 
 was caused by falling shrapnel from friendly 
 guns. He laughed, and answered, "There are 
 no records of any such casualties. Everything 
 that goes up is French, and everything that 
 comes down is Boche." 
 
 Little by little, France has developed a very 
 perfect system of defence against air-craft. 
 When Zeppelins first began coming over 
 Paris and dropping bombs, they came on clear 
 nights and used the rivers as guides to Paris, 
 especially the river Oise. During the second 
 year of the war, the Germans developed their 
 instruments so that it was not necessary for 
 them to use natural land marks as guides. By 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 59 
 
 getting their bearings by instruments, they 
 were enabled to proceed to much greater 
 heights and above the clouds on a cloudy 
 night. It was reported that they used smoke- 
 making devices for concealment. The Zep- 
 pelins, going higher, meant that attacking 
 aeroplanes must be developed which could 
 quickly go higher. One method of attack was 
 for an aeroplane to get over the Zeppelin and 
 drop an incendiary bomb through the gas bag. 
 When the French improved their type of 
 aeroplane so that it successfully met the Zep- 
 pelin, the Germans began using aeroplanes 
 for their raids. At first they came by day, at 
 an average height of about 1500 metres. Now, 
 German planes average 6000 to 6200 metres in 
 height, and there it is difficult for the anti- 
 aircraft guns to reach them. Since the end of 
 1916, the German aeroplanes come usually at 
 night, following some natural landmark, for 
 they have not yet been able to keep their bear- 
 ings or sense of direction in fogs or clouds as 
 could the Zeppelins, by the use of instruments. 
 Bomb-dropping from such altitudes has 
 proved to be very inaccurate. No military 
 damage of consequence has been accom- 
 plished, and the French officers consider that 
 
60 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 the bombing has been intended merely to 
 intimidate the civilian population. Paris has 
 had good luck, for a very large proportion of 
 the bombs dropped by the Germans have 
 fallen in the parks or squares which abound in 
 Paris. 
 
 An unsatisfactory device is the attempt to 
 illuminate fighting planes by means of search- 
 lights. These searchlights may inconvenience 
 the enemy aviator, but they are certain to 
 dazzle the pilots of the defending planes. The 
 aviator can guard himself against being daz- 
 zled by the use of goggles, but, if this is done, 
 it decreases his ability to find the enemy planes, 
 and when the searchlight is taken away, he is 
 in a worse predicament than before, as he is 
 then lost in the dark. It has been suggested 
 that searchlights be kept playing upon an 
 enemy plane in order to dazzle the aviator so 
 that, if he does not lose his sense of direction, 
 his efficiency as a bomb-dropper and an 
 observer shall be diminished. But this has not 
 proved practical, as it is almost impossible to 
 follow a moving machine with a searchlight. 
 The moment the light strikes the aviator, he 
 drops, and it is some minutes before he can be 
 picked up again, while in the meantime, the 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 61 
 
 light has, perchance, revealed the where- 
 abouts of the friendly aviators. 
 
 The best defence for American seacoast 
 cities is in addition to guns an alert and well- 
 trained esquadrille, guided by watching sta- 
 tions and always on the lookout for a possible 
 attack. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN MID-CHANNEL 
 
 It was with little pleasure that I accepted 
 the suggestion to go to England. We had 
 come to France to see as much of the war as 
 we could, in a brief visit, and I did not want to 
 tear myself away from the so-called battle- 
 lines for any purpose whatsoever. Little did I 
 realize that in going to London, I was going 
 directly to the heart of the very kind of fight- 
 ing that we had come abroad to see, — the 
 defence of cities against enemy aircraft. 
 
 On the boat-train from Paris, I had one of 
 the pleasantest experiences of my life. My 
 compartment was filled with French people, 
 charming and intelligent, including two very 
 pretty girls, travelling with their mother. We 
 soon entered into conversation and I found 
 that the interest of the French people in every 
 thing relating to America is intense and sym- 
 pathetic. The French have, themselves, so 
 perfect a civilization, such a perfect home life 
 and such a high development of both art and 
 
64 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 science, that they have been in the past a 
 somewhat provincial people. Why study 
 other countries, when their own country was 
 almost everything that humanity desires in a 
 high state of perfection. Now, however, like 
 the rest of the world, France is beginning to 
 open her eyes and reach out her hands to her 
 sister democracies. To the average French 
 person, America is almost incomprehensible; 
 almost everything about us is beyond the ken 
 of an old and settled country. Everything, 
 indeed, except our love for freedom and our 
 cordial manners. We have, in large part, the 
 gaiety and optimism of the South combined 
 with Anglo-Saxon political institutions. That 
 much the French understand, but many other 
 things are beyond them. Our practical effi- 
 ciency, combined with an almost sentimental 
 idealism, is in exact variance with the Latin 
 point of view, which is rather materialistic in 
 national affairs and a bit old-fashioned in their 
 conduct of their personal business. It is 
 almost impossible for a Frenchman to under- 
 stand our habit of assimilating the crowds of 
 foreigners who come to make their homes with 
 us. It is hard for them to grasp our enormous 
 size, the off-hand way in which we wander 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 65 
 
 about from city to city, and our lack of respect 
 for money. A fortune is so hard to amass in 
 Europe, that a Frenchman cannot understand 
 the comparative indifference with which we 
 make and lose money. All these things and 
 many others we discussed as the train ran 
 through the beautiful rolling fields of Nor- 
 mandy. Captain Ward had told me not to 
 talk about America to the British, as the sub- 
 ject enraged them. That was only a few short 
 months ago. Nothing could be more hearten- 
 ing to those who love other countries beside 
 their own than the whole-hearted way in 
 which both the French and British have wel- 
 comed us with all our faults and short-com- 
 ings, as though we were their dearest and their 
 oldest friend. 
 
 I was met at the Havre station by a sergeant 
 of the American military police. He took me 
 at once to the major in charge of the lines of 
 communication, and treated me with the 
 utmost courtesy and respect. These Ameri- 
 can military police are a very useful branch of 
 the service. When large numbers of Ameri- 
 can soldiers, many of whom do not speak 
 French, are travelling in strange countries, it 
 is important that there be men stationed at 
 
66 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 every large city to see that they are guided 
 promptly and courteously about their affairs. 
 Sometimes one meets an inefficient one. I 
 remember the American military police at 
 one port, when we were on our way home. I 
 stepped up to him and asked, "Are you one 
 of the military police?" He answered, "Yes." 
 I asked, "Can you speak French?" He said 
 "No." I then asked him if he knew where the 
 boat left for the United States, and he said that 
 he had not the slightest idea. I was then look- 
 ing at him rather curiously to determine 
 whether he was drunk or just stupid. He 
 heaved a deep sigh, shifted his weight from 
 one foot to the other, and remarked, "There 
 'haint the Hell of lot to this job." There cer- 
 tainly was not. However, I am glad to say 
 that most American military police are both 
 efficient and courteous. The one at Havre did 
 everything possible to expedite my errands. 
 
 The streets of Havre might well be those of 
 a British city. British soldiers are every- 
 where. The streets were crowded with them 
 and the tram-cars were filled with them going 
 to and from their camps. There were many 
 English women in uniform. They wore soft 
 campaign hats, olive-drab blouses and skirts, 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 67 
 
 brown stockings and low shoes. They were 
 the members of the Woman's Army Auxiliary 
 Corps, which supplies stenographers, clerks, 
 chauffeurs, and other workers to the British 
 Army. They were neat and intelligent 
 women, doing a vast and highly important 
 work toward winning the war. As they 
 walked about the streets of Havre, each one 
 was accompanied by a young soldier, and all 
 seemed to be having a good time. I asked a 
 British officer if the presence of these women 
 in France, was not a great help toward keep- 
 ing soldiers from getting home-sick. He said, 
 laughing, that many of them were more effi- 
 cient at that than at whatever they had enlisted 
 to do. He added that as they held the rank of 
 privates or of non-commissioned officers, the 
 officers were not allowed to associate with 
 them. I think he was rather jealous of the 
 Tommies. 
 
 Part of the beautiful city of Havre rises to 
 high cliffs overlooking the Channel. On the 
 highest point is a lighthouse, and about it were 
 many British soldiers lying in the grass, look- 
 ing wistfully out across the Channel to the dis- 
 tant shores of home. Every few moments an 
 aeroplane would rise up from the shore and, 
 
68 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 joining others wheeling about over the water, 
 watched for submarines. Behind the cliffs is 
 the portion of Havre now occupied by the 
 Belgian Government for its capital and the 
 transaction of its business. Below the cliffs 
 stretches a wide and sandy bathing beach, 
 dotted with bright-colored umbrellas and 
 little bathing-houses, and thronged with Brit- 
 ish soldiers and French and British civilians. 
 The beach might have been one of our Long 
 Island beaches on a pleasant summer Sunday, 
 except that the women wore the charmingly 
 suitable and scant bathing suit customary in 
 France. Opposite the lower part of the city 
 are the long and busy wharfs. They were 
 crowded with German prisoners, young, active 
 men, still in their own uniforms, busily 
 engaged in loading and unloading freight. I 
 was told that they were perfectly contented, 
 and had been promised the same pay that they 
 would have received as soldiers in the Ger- 
 man Army. They were within sight of a few 
 sentries, but they practically never tried to 
 escape. There were officers, sometimes, who 
 tried to get away, but it is unheard of for an 
 enlisted man to do so. They consider that the 
 fighting is ended, as far as they are concerned. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 69 
 
 and they do not wish to go back to the trenches 
 to be killed. 
 
 The Channel route from Havre to South- 
 ampton is mostly used by civilians, but there 
 is a goodly sprinkling of soldiers and officers 
 going home on leave. My chair was placed 
 next to that of a Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel, 
 who was going home for a rest after having 
 treated 60,000 soldiers suffering from malaria 
 in his hospital at Malta. Turks are not the 
 only enemy that the British must meet and 
 conquer in the Orient. The Channel was 
 somewhat rough and it was a funny, though 
 pathetic, sight, to see tanned and battle- 
 scarred British officers, who had dutifully 
 faced the guns of the enemy for many months 
 without a qualm, leaning helplessly over the 
 rail of the boat and descending at last in 
 Southampton, pale and dishevelled. Our train 
 for London was crowded with men home on 
 leave, their rifles and shrapnel helmets 
 strapped on their backs, but on their tanned 
 faces a smile of happiness that came from the 
 heart. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LONDON IN WARTIME 
 
 On registering at a hotel in London, I was 
 given a blank which must be filled out by all 
 aliens, and on which I was obliged to set forth 
 at length what seemed the history of my life. 
 I also was told that I must register at the near- 
 est police station. I registered at the Bow 
 Street police station, where I met a very 
 pleasant officer, who told me that being an 
 American officer, I was not obliged to register 
 at all. 
 
 On the evening of my arrival, I walked out 
 to the Strand, which is crowded with people 
 if a German raid is not taking place, and got 
 my first view of a London crowd in wartime. 
 The atmosphere struck me as distinctly 
 unpleasant. Nine out of every ten persons; 
 walking on the Strand were women. It may 
 be perfectly legitimate for women to walk 
 through the Strand in the evening attended or 
 unattended, but the appearance and actions of; 
 many of the women made one glad that na 
 
72 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 American soldiers were with them. One 
 grabbed me by the arm as I passed. I was 
 impressed that the London authorities do very 
 little, if anything, to protect soldiers from one 
 of the worst enemies that an army has to fear. 
 
 And while thoughtless soldiers and painted 
 women walked up and down the street, 
 another little scene was being enacted across 
 the way, at a large station on the Strand. A 
 curious crowd was gathered about one of the 
 station's wagon entrances, near which the 
 trains unloaded, watching ambulance after 
 ambulance being filled with wounded from 
 the recent push in France, and quickly driven 
 away. While the crowds in the street thought- 
 lessly enjoyed themselves and carelessly 
 glanced at the swiftly-moving, white ambu- 
 lances, with the red crosses on the outside, 
 inside lay some of the very men that had made 
 Britain's last great victory possible. I glanced 
 in one of the ambulances and saw two boys, 
 still in uniform, lying with their eyes closed 
 and bloody bandages about their heads. 
 
 In London, only the Strand appeared 
 thoughtless. In general, British men and 
 women there, and in every other part of the 
 island, seemed to be doing their best to win the 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 73 
 
 war. In London, I first learned from men, 
 who had been present, of the wonders per- 
 formed by that "contemptible little army," 
 when first sent to the continent. Barely a 
 handful, as modern armies go, they lacked 
 everything which usually makes success pos- 
 sible in warfare. Their largest gun was an 
 eighteen pounder, and for a long period of 
 time, they had so little ammunition that they 
 could only fire six shots a day. The Germans 
 might relieve their front line trenches in plain 
 sight, but if the six shots had been expended, 
 the British could not fire at them. They did 
 not have control of the air and, as a result, 
 they could not obtain the accurate range for 
 the few shots they could fire. Their guns 
 were not big enough to blow away the Ger- 
 man barbed wire entanglements, and as a 
 result, they charged with insufficient artillery 
 preparation and were caught on wire that 
 should have been blown to shreds, or were shot 
 down in rows by machine guns which could 
 not be silenced because of lack of artillery. 
 
 Often, because of inferior ammunition or 
 for other causes, then not possible to rectify, 
 the weak British barrage, directed against the 
 Germans, fell among their own troops, and 
 
74 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 one well-known Canadian regiment is said to 
 have been nearly exterminated from this 
 cause. As one English sergeant expressed it, 
 "The men will gladly go against whatever 
 they are sent, but it does take the heart out of 
 the men for our own guns to be turned on us." 
 
 Insufficient food and insufficient clothing 
 and other hardships were borne, enough to 
 break the spirit of ordinary men, and yet they 
 withstood the attack of the German hordes, 
 equipped with big guns, an abundance of 
 machine guns, plenty of ammunition, food and 
 clothing, and everything else needed by an 
 army, and forced them to take to trench war- 
 fare and give Britain and France a real chance 
 to prepare. When the war began, France had 
 barely one thousand rounds per gun for her 
 artillery, and was little prepared for the 
 unexpected onslaught made on her. 
 
 An English officer described fighting in 
 those days, when complicated systems of first 
 trench dugouts were not employed, as follows : 
 "You are in a trench and the Huns begin to 
 bombard you. Your guns, because of lack of 
 ammunition, withhold their fire. A Hun shell 
 bursts just short of your trench with deafen- 
 ing roar, but you are still safe. Shells are 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 75 
 
 bursting all about. One goes past, just miss- 
 ing landing in the trench. One falls in a 
 traverse next you and kills every man in it. 
 And so it goes; you hope each moment that 
 you will be safe to the next." 
 
 Another British officer told me how one 
 day the commander of the artillery came to 
 the men in the font trenches and quietly said, 
 **I have all the ammunition I need. At what 
 shall I fire?" A German battery that had 
 been killing many British in the front trench 
 was selected as a target, and the British artil- 
 lery opened fire. The German battery imme- 
 diately responded by firing on the British 
 infantry, which called the British artillery 
 upon the telephone and begged it to stop as 
 the target was killing more of their men. The 
 answer was that the British artillery intended 
 to finish what it began. Shells came from 
 every direction back of the British trenches 
 towards that German battery, which was soon 
 put out of action. The British infantry did 
 not know the army had so many guns, and 
 from that time forth, British soldiers fought 
 on more equal terms with their opponents. It 
 is calculated that had Britain been prepared. 
 
76 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 over two hundred thousand of her dead sol- 
 diers would be alive to-day. 
 
 The men of Britain have not been the only 
 ones to win glory in this war. The women of 
 Britain, often of gentle birth and unused to 
 any form of labor, have gone into the muni- 
 tion factories and made possible the victories 
 of the front. Everywhere they have taken 
 man's place to leave him free to fight. In the 
 ages to come, when British boys read of the 
 glorious deeds of Britain's soldiers and sailors 
 in this war, let him also remember British 
 w^omen, who have given up everything, 
 including, frequently, their health and lives, 
 to help add the glory to those deeds. 
 
 London, like Paris, seemed to be filled with 
 soldiers. The best drilled soldiers I have ever 
 seen, were those of the crack British regiments. 
 I saw a company of new men drilling outside 
 of the barracks near Buckingham Palace, who 
 were being trained to be sent shortly to the 
 front, and the drill of those young soldiers 
 would have done credit to West Point Cadets. 
 
 I saw many wounded about the streets of 
 London. When first out of the hospitals, they 
 wear uniforms of blue overall material with 
 red neckties. When nearly well, they wear 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 77 
 
 their regular uniforms with a blue band about 
 the arm. I asked a British officer why the 
 wounded wore the blue band. He answered 
 that it was so that they could not get a drink. 
 It seems that Tommy can get all the drink he 
 can pay for unless he is wounded, in which 
 event, he must go to the extra trouble of wear- 
 ing something that will conceal his blue uni- 
 form or band. It will take something more 
 than a blue uniform or a band to keep Tommy 
 from getting his drink. 
 
 The price of food in London was less than 
 in the United States, and the prices of most 
 other commodities were likewise cheaper. All 
 military equipment could be purchased for 
 about half the price that similar articles 
 would cost in the United States, and there did 
 not seem to be a noticeable scarcity of any of 
 the so-called necessities. It would pay the 
 United States to copy British laws against 
 profiteering. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AIR RAIDS AND COURAGE 
 
 In FORMER wars, every civilized nation has 
 refrained from injuring non-combatants 
 whenever possible. This practice was based 
 upon rules of warfare recognized by all 
 nations for centuries, and was originally 
 founded upon humane grounds. In this war, 
 Germany apparently regards no rules of inter- 
 national law or usage as binding upon her 
 where it is to her advantage to violate them. 
 
 Warfare, as developed by German stand- 
 ards, demands that the home cities of the 
 enemy be bombed without any intention of 
 doing direct military damage. The purpose 
 is to create such fearful havoc among non- 
 combatants that panic and a desire for peace, 
 at any price, will ensue. The attacks by the 
 Germans on London, and other unprotected 
 English cities, show clearly that they aim to 
 exterminate as many British as they are able 
 without regard to either age or sex. 
 
 London is as much a fortified city as is 
 
80 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 New York City, with Governors Island near- 
 by, which means, of course, that in a military 
 sense, it is not a fortified city at all. Bombs are 
 dropped from such a height that absolutely 
 no accuracy can be obtained, and the Horse 
 Guards or Tower of London might not be hit 
 even if the hostile aircraft, without interfer- 
 ence, dropped its bombs from exactly over- 
 head. The ordinary height of raids while I 
 was in England, was 14,000 feet. Assume, in 
 addition, that the hostile aircraft is travelling 
 seventy or more miles an hour, then one can 
 appreciate the difficulty of accurate bomb- 
 dropping. Since all Englishmen from nine- 
 teen to forty-five years of age are in the army, 
 unless exempt, and are presumably away on 
 duty, the Germans must know if they bomb 
 an English residential section, that old men, 
 and particularly women and children, will be 
 the main suf5ferers. If they kill a soldier, it 
 must be when he is home on leave. Most of 
 the bombs have been dropped in the resi- 
 dential and hotel sections. Once, entirely by 
 accident, a bomb struck a barracks, and while 
 I was in London, a bomb fell on one of the 
 few German landmarks, a German gym- 
 nasium. "The folks at home" are what they 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 81 
 
 are after, and women and children furnish the 
 greatest number of their victims. 
 
 The aircraft attacks on Great Britain began 
 with Zeppelin raids, which at first caused 
 great damage. They came at great heights, 
 and for some time it was very difficult to 
 injure them. The anti-aircraft guns reached 
 them with difficulty, and the bullets from the 
 machine guns of the British aeroplanes caused 
 little damage. Finally, incendiary bullets, to 
 be used in the machine guns of the British 
 aeroplanes, were invented, the purpose of 
 which was to set fire to the gas in the Zep- 
 pelin's gas bag. There were three kinds of 
 incendiary bullets produced, and there was a 
 wide difference of opinion as to which kind 
 was preferable. An aviator named Robinson 
 decided that he would use all three kinds alter- 
 nately, and he attacked a Zeppelin and 
 destroyed it. It was then for the first time 
 discovered that the effect of the three kinds of 
 incendiary bullets, combined, was much bet- 
 ter than any one kind singly. Robinson- 
 received the Victoria Cross. From the time- 
 that he brought down his first Zeppelin, one 
 was destroyed in nearly every raid on England 
 thereafter. 
 
82 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Zeppelins, having thus proved unsuccess- 
 ful, aeroplanes began to come over in the day- 
 time. The English planes attacked them, and 
 they were further subjected to fire from the 
 anti-aircraft guns. The practice finally was 
 adopted by the Germans of coming over on 
 moonlight nights, when rivers and other nat- 
 ural landmarks could be used as guides. The 
 Zeppelins had come over on cloudy days and 
 nights, but the aeroplanes were afraid to lose 
 their way on such nights. A British aviator 
 told me that if a German aviator came over in 
 a cloud or a fog, he might not be able to tell 
 whether he were flying upside down or right 
 side up, for the reason that he would lose all 
 sense of direction. At the present time, most 
 of the attacks on London are made by aero- 
 planes, coming singly, at intervals on moon- 
 light nights. 
 
 I arrived in London at the ideal time for 
 air-raids, during what the English call "the 
 harvest moon." While I was in or near Lon- 
 don, six air-raids took place. The first raid 
 occurred about 8 o'clock in the evening. Next 
 day I saw where three bombs had fallen. One 
 fell in St. James Park, and left a hole about 
 30x30x8 feet. Windows, several hundred feet 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 83 
 
 away, were shattered. I saw a five-story, 
 wooden, frame house beyond St. Pancras Sta- 
 tion, which had been hit by a bomb, and it 
 appeared as if a section 40x40x40 feet had 
 been bodily cut from it. A bomb fell on a 
 hotel near the one in which I was staying, 
 killing several persons and wounding an 
 American lieutenant in the arm. The British 
 ofEcial report stated that fifteen people were 
 killed during the raid, and seventy injured. 
 
 As a sample of what the German rulers tell 
 their people, let us look at the ofBcial Ger- 
 man report, as published next day : 
 
 "Last night our airmen attacked England. Bombs were 
 dropped on military buildings and warehouses in the heart 
 of London. Fires gave evidence of the effect. All our 
 machines returned undamaged." 
 
 I believe that I saw where everyone of the 
 bombs dropped on London landed, and I later 
 saw where some poor workman's home had 
 been demolished at South End. After most 
 careful inquiries, I could not find that a single 
 bomb had been dropped on a military build- 
 ing or a warehouse, nor were there any fires. 
 The incendiary bombs formerly dropped from 
 the Zeppelins caused great fires, but those 
 
84 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 dropped from aeroplanes while I was in Lon- 
 don did not cause fires. They were built to 
 demolish and kill. 
 
 During the time of the harvest nioon, raids 
 were expected every evening; in fact, they 
 could gauge about the time the raiders would 
 arrive. I watched the next raid from the street 
 in front of my hotel. During raids the streets 
 were deserted except by Americans and 
 "drunks." After a few Americans have been 
 killed, they will learn to take cover, and the 
 "drunks" will have the streets to themselves. I 
 left cover during raids for the reason that I 
 had been sent abroad to study the very thing 
 that was happening, and it was my business to 
 be in the best position to see. Otherwise, it 
 was foolhardiness, not bravery, to neglect tak- 
 ing cover. I could clearly see the bursting 
 shells in the sky, but was unable to see the one 
 German aeroplane that had penetrated the 
 London barrage. 
 
 The next day I saw where two bombs had 
 been dropped in quick succession on Old Kent 
 Road, near Old Grange Street. One bomb 
 had fallen in the center of the street, and 
 another in the middle of the adjoining block. 
 Being in uniform, I was admitted inside the 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 85 
 
 police lines. It was a poor section of the city, 
 where many families lived in each small house. 
 I counted, approximately, 150 houses that 
 ranged from being practically demolished to 
 having some portion of their fronts blown in. 
 The official report stated that seven persons 
 had been killed and twenty-five injured. The 
 small number was probably because the raid 
 took place at 8 o'clock. Had it occurred later, 
 hundreds would have been killed in their beds. 
 
 The one raider who did this damage had 
 gotten past the London barrage and had shut 
 off his engine when high in the air to the west 
 of London. He then planed down noiselessly 
 towards London, with his engine shut off, 
 dropped the two bombs, and started for home 
 as fast as he could. It is the practice of the 
 German raiders to get rid of their bombs as 
 fast as possible, for the reason that the bombs 
 are just as dangerous to them in the air, should 
 a bomb be struck by a shell from the ground, 
 as it is after it falls. 
 
 The next night was foggy, and London 
 drew a sigh of relief, for this meant no air 
 raid. The following night, a raid on London 
 was expected, but was aimed elsewhere. On 
 the night that followed came a raid, but no 
 
86 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 hostile plane got through the London defences. 
 The next night another raid occurred. I 
 could plainly see the burstingshrapnel directly 
 overhead. I first went out on the street with 
 a Canadian officer who had served in the 
 American Army during the war with Spain. 
 The streets were deserted, except for the 
 usual intoxicated men. Even the police had 
 taken shelter. Thinking that we might see 
 better from a higher elevation, we returned to 
 the hotel, where many guests were huddled 
 away from the shafts and windows, and we 
 were looking out of an upper window when an 
 old man came over to where I was and, timidly 
 touching my coat, said, "Young man, you 
 should not look out of that window ; your life 
 is much too valuable to lose it in that way." 
 I said that I wished to see the fighting. He 
 said, "One can see it well out of my room." 
 He opened the door of his room and went to 
 the window, and we could see the bursting 
 shells. Suddenly, he realized where he was, 
 and crying out, "Oh, I should not be here, I 
 should be in the hallway," he ran from the 
 room. I saw all I could, and then I heard one 
 of the maids say, "The best place is on the roof, 
 but no one is allowed to go there because of 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 87 
 
 falling shrapnel." Up on the roof my newly- 
 found friend and I went, and we discovered a 
 most wonderful fight going on over our heads. 
 
 Across the sky came burst after burst of 
 exploding shells following the course of the 
 German aeroplanes. Suddenly, another series 
 of bursts would take place in another direc- 
 tion. Several fights were going on in several 
 different directions at once, accompanied by 
 what sounded like exploding bombs. After 
 about ten minutes, the manager of the hotel 
 came up and ordered us off the roof. I do not 
 blame him for being careful, for I learned 
 afterwards, that a bomb had fallen on the 
 hotel a short time before I arrived, and that 
 fifteen people had been killed. This, per- 
 haps, explains why most of the people were so 
 anxious to take cover. On my way down- 
 stairs from the roof, I met a young Canadian 
 lieutenant "from Arizona," who suggested 
 going out on the street. As we went, I heard 
 one of the maids say, in a loud tone of aston- 
 ishment, "Why they enjoy it." 
 
 We had the streets almost to ourselves. 
 Above our heads, the shells from the anti-air- 
 craft guns continued to explode. A shell fell 
 into the street near us and half buried itself in 
 
88 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 the roadway. Almost as soon as it fell, some 
 men ran over from a neighboring building 
 and began digging for it. Crowds of people 
 were huddled in doorways, and my Canadian 
 friend would jocularly ask them what was all 
 the excitement. He told me he knew of sev- 
 eral places where the crowds from the theatres 
 went to get shelter, so he and I varied watch- 
 ing the bursting shrapnel with wandering 
 about and looking over the crowds that were 
 taking shelter. When my newly-made friend 
 saw a number of people who looked particu- 
 larly disconsolate, he would remark, in a loud 
 tone of voice, "There must be a raid ; this is a 
 most terrible occasion." The official report 
 stated that eleven persons were l^illed and 
 eighty-two injured. 
 
 About a month before, raiders dropped a 
 bomb in a street off the Strand. The street 
 had been repaired when I saw it, and a hotel 
 opposite, in which several people were killed 
 in their beds, was being rebuilt. Holes were 
 blown through solid brick walls some distance 
 away. Anyone standing within a radius of 
 several hundred feet might have been killed, 
 and if much closer, would surely have been 
 killed unless they were lying on the ground. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 89 
 
 The most pathetic raid was when a bomb fell 
 upon a children's school. I was told that chil- 
 dren's arms and legs and heads were scattered 
 around a bloody street littered with little 
 mangled bodies. 
 
 Though the damage caiised by the dropping 
 bombs seems to be great, much of the loss of 
 life comes from flying shrapnel and pieces of 
 high explosive shells from the British anti- 
 aircraft guns, for it must be remembered that 
 everything that goes up must come down. 
 While I was in London, a young girl went to 
 her front window to look at the raid when an 
 anti-aircraft shell came through the window 
 of the bedroom above, crashed through the 
 ceiling, and struck her on the head. Many 
 others were killed, likewise, by the fire of the 
 home defence guns. The English prevent 
 more loss of life by ordering all the inhabi- 
 tants to take shelter. 
 
 As for reprisals, whenever I heard it said 
 that Americans and Britons must not adopt 
 German methods of warfare, I am reminded 
 of a little incident that occurred on a railroad 
 train in England. A friend of mine, a civil- 
 ian, was talking, and there were three British 
 Tommies in the same carriage, apparently 
 
90 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 paying no attention to what was being said. 
 My friend remarked that English soldiers 
 would never be willing to attack unfortified 
 German cities through the air, and thus be the 
 cause of killing women and children. No 
 sooner were the words out of his mouth, than 
 the three Tommies shouted in chorus, "Oh! 
 wouldn't we 1" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 WITH THE BRITISH BATTERIES 
 
 I WAS overjoyed when I received permis- 
 sion from the British Home Defence Office to 
 join some anti-aircraft batteries near the 
 mouth of the Thames, at a point where the 
 raiders, following the course of the river, 
 would first arrive over England. Once the 
 Germans had tried to destroy the place by 
 dropping twenty-eight bombs on it, and shortly 
 after five more. They succeeded in killing 
 two persons. One bomb, meant for a powder 
 boat in the harbor, was dropped by a German 
 who flew low to insure accuracy. The bomb 
 actually dropped in the water between the 
 boat and the wharf, in a space of about two 
 feet, and did not explode. 
 
 I arrived on Sunday. That night about 
 fourteen German planes came overhead, 
 passing from the continent, on their way to 
 bomb London, and I was with the British bat- 
 teries in action against them. We could hear 
 the drone of the German motors above us. 
 
92 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Sometimes the aeroplanes, themselves, could 
 be seen indistinctly against the moon. All was 
 silence at the guns until the gun commander 
 considered he had the proper range, and then 
 the racket bqgan. Few sights are more won- 
 derful than many guns in action at the same 
 time. The noise was deafening until the Ger- 
 man raiders got out of range, and our work 
 was taken up by the batteries nearer London. 
 The next evening, while I was eating my 
 dinner, air-raid signals came and the firing 
 began. The shrapnel could be heard bursting 
 high up in the air somewhere above the house, 
 and the windows rattled with each explosion. 
 The officers ofif duty took their time about 
 finishing eating, after which I accompanied 
 the Commandant to the guns, where he 
 assumed command. High in the air, forming 
 a zone of fire, were the bursting shells from 
 the guns of our batteries. From above, came 
 the drone of the German motors. It reminded 
 one of a good, old-fashioned Fourth of July, 
 only more of it. An added excitement comes 
 from the fact that the Germans can see the 
 flash from the battery and may succeed in 
 landing a bomb close enough to put it out of 
 commission. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 93 
 
 I have mentioned days, so as to illustrate 
 what was not such an extraordinary week for a 
 Londoner as Americans might imagine. I 
 had arrived in London on a Sunday. There 
 had taken place in nine days, a total of six 
 air-raids on London, and one attack elsewhere. 
 
 Next day, as I was working at my books, I 
 heard what seemed a familiar drone overhead, 
 and soon the alarm came that a day raid was 
 being attempted. The batteries were manned, 
 but did not get a chance to fire. I learned, 
 later, that by mistake, a British seaplane, com- 
 ing from the ocean had flown without giving 
 notice, through the zone from which only 
 enemies usually came. As a result, an alarm 
 was given and business in London and other 
 places was suspended for hours. The head of 
 the anti-aircraft service was very clever in 
 explaining the mistake to the public. As may 
 be well imagined, an alarm creates real alarm 
 and the public would be even more caustic in 
 criticising the anti-aircraft service were they 
 sent to cover and prevented from attending to 
 their business for some hours because of base- 
 less alarms. He got over the difficulty beauti- 
 fully, by having all the papers publish 
 accounts to the effect, that the raiders had been 
 
94 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 successfully driven off, whereupon everybody 
 said, '^Good, old, anti-aircraft service, it is 
 really getting quite efficient." 
 
 The personnel of the British anti-aircraft 
 troops for home defence has changed mate- 
 rially. The British began with a system 
 under which volunteers did duty every third 
 night. There was little discipline among 
 these troops, and many of the men, because of 
 age and physical condition, were unfit for 
 their work. The chief of this service was con- 
 stantly annoyed because at the last moment 
 when news was received of a coming raid, 
 some man would call up and say that he had, 
 for instance, a stomach-ache and it thereupon 
 became necessary for the head of the service 
 to find some other volunteer, whose turn it was 
 to be off duty, to take the place of the man 
 who claimed to be ill. The aircraft attacks 
 on Great Britain became so numerous that 
 these volunteers were told that they would be 
 obliged to enter the regular service and serve 
 continuously or be discharged. The old and 
 physically unfit were thus forced out, and an 
 efficient fighting force of young men was left. 
 These men are now the same as regulars, and 
 are on duty all the time. They do not attend 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 95 
 
 to their business when they are off duty, as 
 their work at their guns takes too much of 
 their time to permit this. 
 
 The question has been continuously asked 
 why London suffers from air-raids while Paris 
 has been nearly exempt. There are many rea- 
 sons and I will state a few of them. In the 
 case of London, the raiders from the conti- 
 nent, following the Thames or other natural 
 landmarks, are over London in a very few 
 moments after reaching land. They are not 
 subjected to gun fire while crossing the chan- 
 nel and the only opportunity of the British 
 to fight them is during those comparatively 
 few moments when the hostile aircrafts are 
 over England. The situation in the case of 
 Paris is very different. Hostile aircraft must 
 first pass several entrenched French armies, 
 each of which is prepared to send up artillery 
 barrages and to have its fighting aeroplanes 
 follow the enemy. The aeroplanes at the 
 British front take no part in the defence of 
 London. The aeroplanes at the French front 
 are part of the defences of Paris. When one 
 considers that every city is largely deprived 
 of aeroplanes for the benefit of the armies at 
 the front, one can imagine the great advantage 
 
96 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 if those same aeroplanes can still at the front 
 be used in the city's defence. 
 
 In addition to London being easier to at- 
 tack, there is another factor and that is that 
 Germany hates England and wishes to bring 
 home to English people the same suffering 
 which Germany has been able to inflict on 
 her other enemies. Northeastern France has 
 been stripped bare. England itself also must 
 be taught the cost of opposing the Prussian 
 war-lord and German terrorizing means the 
 killing of non-combatants and the doing of 
 all material damage possible. 
 
 There is one other reason why London 
 seems to be attacked more than Paris. The 
 British report all raids while I have heard it 
 said that the French do not. Whether France 
 suppresses news of raids or not, the fact re- 
 mains that the raiders constantly reach Lon- 
 don while Paris is seemingly free from con- 
 stant attack. 
 
 The British are not idle. A stay at their 
 artillery school and an inspection of the Lon- 
 don defences showed me that. They are grad- 
 ually developing a defence that in the end 
 may successfully keep away raiders. At night 
 when approaching enemy aircraft cannot be 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 97 
 
 seen, a barrage or wall of fire is sent up and 
 a hostile aircraft must go through it or turn 
 back if it cannot get around it. 
 ' Anti-aircraft artillery is still in its infancy, 
 particularly night fighting, which is evidenced 
 by the fact that the Germans are limiting their 
 raids to dark nights when they cannot be 
 seen. Britain is working hard on her anti- 
 aircraft problem, and she may at any time find 
 the secret of stopping aeroplanes just as she 
 did in the case of the Zeppelins. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WHAT TO DO IN AN AIR RAID 
 
 Since the United States may be attacked 
 from air at any moment, it will be well to set 
 forth what precautions the British have taken 
 to minimize the damage done by air raids. 
 
 The City of London is kept as dark at night 
 as is consistent with safe passage through the 
 streets. A few street lamps are dimly lighted. 
 All shades over windows of buildings must 
 be lowered. In every room of each hotel is 
 the following sign for the benefit of strangers : 
 
 "defence of the realm act^ order in council 
 "In compliance with the above, it is requested that 
 blinds (shades) be kept lowered between sunset and sun- 
 rise. A breach of this regulation renders the visitor liable 
 to a penalty not exceeding i50." 
 
 All outer doors must be securely closed, and 
 many persons have been arrested and fined 
 because a small reflected light showed through 
 a crack. 
 
 The worst damage that can be sustained by 
 
100 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 any city is loss of life, and this can be largely 
 eliminated if the inhabitants of the bombed 
 city will obey certain simple rules of conduct. 
 The London authorities have published rules 
 which, in their essential particulars, should be 
 adopted by the authorities of our cities likely 
 to be attacked, and should be learned and 
 obeyed by the inhabitants. I set them forth 
 at length : 
 
 "The following recommendations are to be read as gen- 
 eral rules to be followed by each person so far as they 
 apply to the circumstances in which he finds himself. 
 
 "Do not pay heed to mere rumors of a raid, but as soon 
 as you know, whether from a public warning or from 
 anti-aircraft guns coming into action or from the explo- 
 sion of bombs, that an attack is imminent or has begun, 
 take the best cover near at hand. 
 
 "Do not wait till you see aircraft nearly overhead or 
 hear the explosion of a bomb near you. You cannot tell 
 how near the next bomb may fall, especially at night, and 
 apart from the danger from bombs, fragments of shell may 
 fall a long way from the guns. To stay in the open in- 
 volves needless risk even if the attack seems a long way off. 
 
 "If you are in the open, go into the nearest available 
 building. A doorway or open archway, though better 
 than remaining in the open, is not good cover, as it affords 
 little protection against fragments of a bomb exploding on 
 the ground. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 101 
 
 "If bombs are being dropped and there is no building 
 near, it is better to lie down on the ground in the best 
 ditch or hole you can find near at hand, or behind a strong 
 wall or tree, than to remain standing in the open. 
 
 "If you are in a building on the top floor, go downstairs 
 where you will have the best available cover overhead, 
 avoiding lift wells, open stairways, and parts of the build- 
 ing under skylights. 
 
 "Do not look out of windows, but keep in a part of a 
 room or passage where you will be out of the line of frag- 
 ments of metal or debris which may enter by a window or 
 if a bomb should explode outside. 
 
 "Do not crowd in a basement with only a single means 
 of exit. The fumes from all bombs are injurious if 
 breathed in any quantity, and it is advisable to have a 
 second means of exit in case fumes should enter, or a gas 
 pipe be broken, or rapid escape be necessary for any other 
 reason. 
 
 "Horses, if left unattended, should be secured suffi- 
 ciently to prevent their running away. 
 "fire precautions 
 
 "Water is far the best extinguisher for general use 
 against fires caused by incendiary bombs, and should be 
 applied as promptly as possible. Keep a supply of water 
 ready in buckets or cans, some on each floor if possible. 
 See that they are kept filled. 
 
 "Liquid fire extinguishers and hand-pumps for direct- 
 ing the water on to the flames are very useful, though 
 more expensive. 
 
 "You are advised not to buy an extinguisher without a 
 
102 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 written guarantee that it complies with the specifications 
 of the Board of Trade Office of Works, Metropolitan 
 Police, or some approved Fire Prevention Committee. 
 
 "A supply of fine dry sand or soil may be kept ready, in 
 pails or scuttles, in addition to water, especially where 
 there are inflammable liquids which might be set alight. 
 Sec that the sand or soil does not cake. 
 
 "If the gas is turned off at the meter, see that all burners 
 are turned off as well; otherwise there will be serious 
 risk of fire and explosion when the gas is turned on again. 
 
 "Make a note of the quickest means of summoning the 
 Fire Brigade — ^whether by telephone or the nearest fire 
 alarm post. 
 
 "UNEXPLODED BOMBS AND SHELLS 
 
 "Do not move or touch any unexploded bomb or shell. 
 The police should be informed at once where any such 
 missile is lying and steps should be taken to prevent its 
 being interfered with meanwhile. 
 
 "If the bomb has broken, and powdered explosive has 
 been scattered about, do not bring a naked light near. 
 "fumes from bombs 
 
 "Be careful not to breathe fumes given off by bombs. 
 Do not go near where any bomb has fallen unless it is 
 necessary to do so for rescue purposes or to extinguish a 
 fire, or unless you are sure all fumes have cleared away. 
 
 "If a bomb falls near you, get away from the place 
 where it has fallen as quickly as possible, and keep away 
 until the air has cleared. If you are indoors and fumes 
 have entered the building, go out into the open away from 
 where the bomb has fallen; and if the raid is not over, 
 find other shelter. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 103 
 
 "While good cover is the point of most importance, 
 choose, if you can, rooms, corridors, etc., where in addi- 
 tion to cover overhead, there are alternative means of 
 exit, so that if fumes should enter from one direction you 
 may be able to escape the other way. 
 
 "It is better to avoid going near the place where any 
 bomb has fallen than to trust to respirators. If, how- 
 ever, you desire to keep a respirator available for use in 
 case it should be necessary to enter a room where there 
 may be noxious fumes, make sure that the respirator is 
 guaranteed by the maker to comply in all essential points 
 with War Office specifications. Do not on any account 
 rely ori a respirator ojffered for sale unless it is accom- 
 panied by such a guarantee. 
 
 "use of the telephone 
 
 "Do not use the telephone during, or immediately after, 
 a raid except for the most necessary and urgent calls. 
 
 "false reports of airjraids 
 
 "Remember it is an offence punishable by fine or im- 
 prisonment under the Defence of the Realm Regulations 
 to spread false reports of an air-raid warning having been 
 issued or an air-raid having taken place." 
 
 If a house is fairly well built, occupants 
 may consider themselves reasonably safe from 
 injury, except from broken glass, if there are 
 two stories above them, though three storiesj 
 afford a surer protection. It has been found 
 by experience that a bomb will expend most 
 
104 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 of its force in the two upper stories of a fairly 
 well built house. 
 
 The surest way to be safe, however, is to fit 
 up and occupy during raid alarms a little 
 place in the most secluded part of the cellar 
 where one can perhaps forget in the pages of 
 some interesting book that Germany is trying 
 to inflict wholesale murder upon him and all 
 who reside in his neighborhood. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE 
 
 Tragedy was all about us there in England. 
 Bereavement, poverty and actual physical 
 danger were never absent from the minds of 
 the English people. Yet there is something 
 extraordinarily splendid about the way in 
 which everything is done that can be legiti- 
 mately done to maintain the amenities of life 
 and to add what charm and cheer is possible 
 to daily life. It is an ever recurrent surprise 
 to Americans when it is first born in upon 
 them that this war is not a distant thing fought 
 in some out-lying part of the world, to which 
 troops are sent and from which, in time, they 
 return, but that the ugliness and simplicity 
 and bitter practicality of military life is super- 
 imposed directly upon the most finished civil- 
 izations, the most beautifully cultivated 
 country-sides and the most charming homes. 
 Something of that idea struck me on my first 
 visit to an English country house when I saw 
 my modest military toilet articles, last in use 
 
106 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 on the Mexican border, spread out upon the 
 priceless antique bureau in one of the loveliest 
 sleeping rooms I have ever entered and when 
 I realized that just such strictly utilitarian and 
 dun-colored equipment were the treasured 
 possessions of every house in England. 
 
 That evening at dinner I succeeded in prov- 
 ing for the first time that Captain Ward is 
 not infallible. We talked of America and 
 my host and his guests were far from infuri- 
 ated. They were, on the contrary, intensely 
 interested and sympathetic. If America and 
 England can come to understand each other 
 and love each other as brothers should, it will 
 almost be worth the bitter price we have had 
 to pay for such friendship. The English 
 speaking races of the world can insure peace 
 and freedom for all humanity, if they will 
 only drop all international rivalry and jeal- 
 ousy, and stand by one another in every pos- 
 sible way. 
 
 While the English have cut down ostenta- 
 tion as far as possible, they have maintained 
 the simple comforts of life to an extraordinary 
 degree, sometimes with amusing results. I 
 was awakened one morning by a knock at my 
 door, and getting out of bed very scantily 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 107 
 
 draped, supposing the valet had arrived, I 
 opened the door and in tripped a dainty little 
 servant girl carrying hot water. I got hastily 
 back into bed again and she departed. A few 
 minutes later I had risen again and was pre- 
 paring to shave, when the door flew open and 
 she walked in, this time carrying a breakfast 
 tray. I had just recovered from my second 
 fright and was preparing to eat my breakfast, 
 when she returned with my boots. After that 
 I kept the door locked until I was fit to be 
 seen. When I began to get ready for the train 
 I found that the maid had completely packed 
 my roll and that it was in the carriage waiting 
 for me. Some day I hope to find out where 
 in my room that maid had hidden that roll, 
 for I hunted for it "from top to bottom." 
 
 The coachman who drove me to the station 
 told me that his brother had just been blinded 
 in military service; he himself had been 
 examined and rejected five times for physical 
 disability. When I arrived at my hotel, I 
 read in the morning papers that an air-raid 
 had taken place in the evening previous while 
 we were at dinner. 
 
 I quote the foregoing story to illustrate the 
 British point of view. Whether my hostess 
 
108 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 and host knew an air-raid was going on, per- 
 haps overhead, I have no means of knowing, 
 but they must have known that an air-raid was 
 expected to occur that evening. They typify 
 the point of view of the ordinary intelligent 
 Britisher concerning air-raids, namely to take 
 all reasonable precautions as to cover and then 
 forget about them. 
 
 Another British point of view as to material 
 damage caused by raids was shown by an inci- 
 dent that occurred while I was examining 
 some bombed houses. One of the occupants, 
 who had lost apparently everything he owned 
 in the world, was showing me the damage and 
 did not seem very much disturbed by what 
 had been done to his property. I asked him 
 in as sympathetic a tone as I could muster 
 whether his loss had been great. "Oh, nol" 
 he answered, "I am insured." Both the Gov- 
 ernment and private companies give cheap 
 insurance against loss caused by air-raids, and 
 the Government is now planning to give such 
 service free. This insurance is becoming a 
 war measure because it prevents the Germans 
 from succeeding in their attempts to dis- 
 hearten the mass of the English population. 
 
 British character is changing. The slow, 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 109 
 
 conservative, self-satisfied individual formerly 
 depicted in our comic weeklies has departed, 
 and in his place stands a quick-acting, pro- 
 gressive person who wishes to improve 
 methods wherever possible. Great Britain 
 has been "cleansed by fire." Her tremendous 
 losses caused by lack of foresight, the ever 
 impending possibility of defeat unless tremen- 
 dous efforts are made by the nation as a whole^ 
 have inculcated new ideas and ideals into the 
 national character. 
 
 Formerly the belief in the rights of the 
 individual as distinct from those of the nation 
 as a whole seemed ingrained. That a free- 
 born Englishman should be made to serve in 
 the army only if he wished, appeared axiom- 
 atic. Conscription was hard for the ordinary 
 Englishman to swallow, and yet today the 
 motto that "England expects every man to do 
 his duty" should read "England compels 
 every man to do his duty." It has found ready 
 assent. 
 
 The old British belief in the rights of the 
 individual finds expression in the provision 
 that conscientious objectors to the draft need 
 not be obliged to serve. In the United States 
 a man is exempted providing he belongs to 
 
110 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 a religious denomination that keeps him from 
 warfare, but in England a man needs only to 
 '^object conscientiously" in order to be 
 exempted. This means that British conscrip- 
 tion is a form of voluntary conscription, and 
 yet, to the credit of the British let it be said, 
 that conscientious objectors are comparatively 
 few. 
 
 The English belief in the rights of the indi- 
 vidual was typified by an occurrence in Lon- 
 don while I was there. A noted pacifist min- 
 ister announced a pacifist sermon, and the 
 authorities sent one hundred and fifty con- 
 stables to protect him. In the United States 
 there would have been sent one stenographer 
 to take down his sermon as evidence, and two 
 policemen to arrest him. Though the London 
 pacifist preached sedition, the police protected 
 him from a howling mob. The English 
 authorities have not yet learned that there is a 
 great difference between free speech and the 
 right to give utterance to seditious ideas. 
 
 The English treatment of Ireland is difl[i- 
 cult to understand. It is difficult for Ameri- 
 cans to understand why Great Britain does 
 not give Ireland home rule; it is equally diffi- 
 cult for Englishmen, Scotchmen and Welsh- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 111 
 
 men to understand why Irishmen shouldn't be 
 made to serve in the army as they are forced 
 to do. In her treatment of Ireland, Britain 
 has inconsistently ranged from extreme sever- 
 ity to v^hat seems extraordinary good nature 
 and the two follow each other with remarka- 
 ble speed and without apparent reason. 
 
 The British formerly gave a man a com- 
 mission in the army because of his family or 
 social standing; now they give it to him 
 because of his military ability, and because he 
 deserves it. Britain now makes a prominent 
 show of her democracy. I saw in London a 
 very amusing play which showed the changed 
 British point of view, and which set forth 
 pleasantly how real Democracy is getting a 
 hold on Britain's social life. The play was 
 called "General Post" and next to the musical 
 comedies it was having a good run. 
 
 The first act is laid in 1911; the heroine 
 falls in love with her father's tailor, who is a 
 successful one and an officer in the territorials 
 (like our National Guard) ; her father being 
 one of the old school, loudly proclaims that 
 there is no possibility of war with Germany 
 and that the territorials are of no use ; he states 
 that Germany knows that if she went to war 
 
112 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 with Great Britain she would be wiped off the 
 map in a week; the tailor, recognizing his 
 inferior social status, tells the heroine he can- 
 not marry her. The second act is laid in 1915 ; 
 the tailor is Colonel of the territorial battalion 
 in which the heroine's brother holds a com- 
 mission as second lieutenant; her father is a 
 private in the volunteers, father and son, being 
 military inferiors to the tailor, are now well 
 disposed, but not the mother, who still retains 
 the old ideas of caste. The third act is laid 
 after the war; the hero is a Brigadier-General 
 and, for saving the victorious army at the risk 
 of his life at a critical point, he is given the 
 Victoria Cross and is about to be promoted 
 and made a baronet; all England is filled with 
 his praises; mother, father and brother are 
 now anxious for the girl to marry him, but 
 now the heroine refuses. Finally, by accident 
 she is thrown into a position where she accepts 
 him and the curtain goes down on a "bear 
 hug." 
 
 The foregoing outline hardly does justice 
 to the play which was cleverly acted and 
 brought home a salutary lesson to its audience. 
 That such a play should be popular speaks for 
 the changing British point of view. 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 113 
 
 The feeling of ordinary Britons for the 
 Americans is very friendly at the present time. 
 They greatly admire President Wilson and 
 they now believe that he wished to be in the 
 war from its inception but was held back be- 
 cause he did not have a united nation behind 
 him. They do not believe that he at any time 
 was a pacifist and are quite ready to withdraw 
 all the disagreeable statements formerly writ- 
 ten and said about him. The President's notes 
 and messages are eagerly read and, since our 
 entry into the war, are welcomed as master- 
 pieces of careful diplomacy. 
 
 Public sentiment in the United States is 
 carefully watched. The opinions of our prom- 
 inent men are sought on matters affecting 
 English party politics and our editorials are 
 quoted at length in the English papers. In 
 fact it has been said that the American editor- 
 ials are more read and have more real effect 
 in England than they do in the United States. 
 
 I am constantly asked the question, "How 
 do the British feel about this war?" This 
 question I think I can answer. Britain is: 
 determined to win this war. The new nation 
 is using every ounce of its energy to utilize all! 
 it possesses of people and wealth for that end^ 
 
114 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Britain is far from exhaustion in men or 
 money. Efficiency is taking the place of 
 inefficiency. Unnecessary business has been 
 made to give in to the conduct of business 
 which tends towards the prosecution of the 
 war. Women are doing all they can to free 
 men for active service in the army. Every- 
 body's wealth is being made subject to the 
 nation's needs. Whatever may happen to the 
 individual of good or bad the war must be 
 won. With that slogan, Britain is growing 
 stronger each day, and her victories on the 
 fields of France are a proof of the efficiency 
 of her newly developed point of view. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 AMERICANS WITH THE CANADIANS 
 
 It has been said that there are nearly thirty 
 thousand Americans with the Canadians in 
 the military service of Great Britain. 
 Whether attracted by love of adventure or by 
 more serious motives, since 1914, and until 
 our advent in the war, without the knowledge 
 of our Government, Americans in increasing 
 numbers have been crossing into Canada to 
 enlist. Most of them began as privates. Many 
 of them are now officers. They have helped 
 make that brilliant Canadian military record 
 of which all Canadians may be justly proud. 
 
 Many of these Americans can be found on 
 leave in London and I met several of them. 
 One night while I was walking on a London 
 street, a young Canadian lieutenant stopped 
 me and introduced himself as coming from 
 Somerville, Mass. While I was talking to 
 him three other Canadian soldiers stopped, be- 
 cause of my uniform, and introduced them- 
 selves as coming respectively from Syracuse, 
 
116 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 New York, and Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 One day while at lunch in my hotel, another 
 Canadian soldier introduced himself and said 
 that he was from Chicago. He told the story 
 of how he came to enlist. He was engaged 
 to a girl of German extraction in Chicago, but 
 her brother for some reason broke up the 
 engagement. When war came, the brother 
 returned to Germany and became an officer in 
 the Prussian Guards. When the American 
 heard of this, he immediately enlisted in the 
 Canadian Army, in the fall of 1914, to look 
 for that brother. His battalion has met the 
 Prussian Guards many times, but he has never 
 been able to locate him. He seemed to have 
 an idea that if he could find and kill the 
 brother, all obstacles to marrying the girl 
 would be removed, and if he survives the war 
 he could return to Chicago and claim her. 
 
 This American was in London on leave and 
 had been given hopes of obtaining a commis- 
 sion before he returned to the front. He said 
 that he was a scout and that his duties were 
 to crawl between the lines in *'No Man's 
 Land" and sometimes into the German 
 trenches. Previously he was with a machine 
 gun squad and his duty was to run ahead of 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 117 
 
 an infantry charge firing a Lewis machine 
 gun. He carried with him a diary of his 
 experiences wrapped in an American flag, and 
 firmly believed that if the Germans ever cap- 
 tured him and read his diary, they would 
 surely kill him. He also said that ninety per 
 cent of his battalion were Americans. These 
 men were only a few but they could be met 
 wherever Canadian soldiers were gathered in 
 any numbers. They are suffering in the great 
 cause, for hardly a day passes but what there 
 are published the names of several American 
 killed and wounded from among those whose 
 desire for military service could not wait the 
 entry of this country into the war. 
 
 I hope that something can be done to get 
 these men into the American Army. Every 
 one of them that I met said that he was home- 
 sick for our army now that we are in the war 
 and begged me to do everything possible to 
 get him transferred. If Great Britain saw 
 fit to transfer these men in a body to the Amer- 
 ican Army they would form the best possible 
 nucleus for our own newly forming regiments. 
 If some American statesman wishes to earn 
 the undying gratitude of thousands of his fel- 
 low citizens, let him arrange for their transfer 
 
118 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 to the army of their own country. 
 
 I met another Canadian, this time really a 
 Canadian, who had served in a Louisiana 
 regiment during our war with Spain. Later 
 I told an English officer of this incident and 
 remarked that as Canada had helped us dur- 
 ing our war with Spain, it was equally fitting 
 that the United States should help Canada at 
 this time. The Englishman's reply was, '*Oh, 
 I dare say that you would have won your 
 war with Spain without Canadian assistance." 
 He was not one of the new type of Englishmen 
 developed by the war. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ON THE SOMME 
 
 It is most difficult to describe a battlefield 
 so that another person who has not seen it can 
 visualize it. Imagine a country where the 
 ground has been churned and churned until 
 nothing remains except churned sub-soil, top- 
 soil and rubbish. Imagine nothing left but 
 shell holes, smashed dugouts and graves. 
 Imagine the land as lands were ravaged by 
 Attila the Hun, who left nothing except the 
 earth and the sky, and then one can perhaps 
 picture the condition of France when the 
 Germans have done their work. 
 
 Poor France 1 The Somme Valley was for- 
 merly a flourishing agricultural community 
 with populous villages and towns, and now 
 nothing but the earth and sky remain except 
 where a few ruined cellar holes show the 
 former location of a town or village and a few 
 charred stumps show what remains of a mag- 
 nificent forest. 
 
 The town of Albert is on the edge of the 
 
120 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Somme battlefield where the hard fighting of 
 1916 took place. Albert was not in the Ger- 
 man lines at that time, but was unfortunately 
 subject to shell fire from the German guns. It 
 was abandoned by its inhabitants on the 
 approach of the Germans. Many of the houses 
 show the effect of the bombardment, and 
 though a few of the inhabitants had returned 
 the streets and houses seemed deserted except 
 for the British soldiers. All except the few 
 occupied houses were open to the elements and 
 many of them in ruins. From the top of the 
 steeple of the Cathedral still hung the image 
 of the Virgin, since shot down, stretched out 
 horizontally and showing the effect of the 
 German bombardment. 
 
 The road from Albert to Bapaume passed 
 through the scenes of some of the hardest 
 fighting of the Somme battle. From the road 
 could be seen what was formerly Ovillers, 
 Pozieres, Le Sars, Eaucourt-rAbbaye ; noth- 
 ing but rubbish heaps. All along the road 
 were British dugouts, British trenches, British 
 barbed-wire, what was formerly "No Man's 
 Land," German barbed-wire, German 
 trenches, German dugouts and British and 
 German graves. A few hundred yards farther 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 121 
 
 along the same scene is repeated. So it is all 
 along this terrible battlefield where thousands 
 of British lives have been given to win a few 
 hundred yards of bare ground. I counted 
 nine British tanks that had been put out of 
 action and the other debris of a battlefield 
 lay in every direction. The British were try- 
 ing to save as many of the objects abandoned 
 on the field as could be used again. This work 
 is done by British Indians who pile the mate- 
 rial on trains operated on narrow gauge tracks 
 by American engineers. 
 
 When the Germans retreated from the 
 region they showed their diabolical ingenuity 
 to accomplish the killing of men. They left 
 in the abandoned territory many houses, and 
 attractive things, little things scattered about, 
 souvenirs, like German helmets and shining 
 objects. When a British soldier touched the 
 helmet or object, he would be blown up by a 
 bomb. When a soldier went through a path, 
 he would trip over a wire and a bomb would 
 explode. When a man entered a house and 
 stepped, for instance, on the first step of the 
 stairs to the second story, the whole house 
 would be blown up. For months afterwards 
 the houses were blowing up by means of time 
 
122 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 devices. Soon practically no whole houses 
 were left. In the town of Bapaume, a big 
 chateau, a landmark for miles around, was 
 left intact. I never could find out how the 
 British used it, but I rather imagine that a 
 headquarters was there. One day someone 
 moved an image in a small pagoda-like out- 
 house and the chateau went up in the air leav- 
 ing only a big hole in the ground. One night 
 I dined with some British anti-aircraft artil- 
 lery officers in a bomb-proof shelter near this 
 spot. Next the shelter was the pagoda where 
 the image had been. To our rear was the hole 
 where the chateau had been. 
 
 One night while dining near Peronne in 
 one of the few whole houses left standing, one 
 of the officers of a battery stationed near that 
 point casually remarked during dinner that 
 since most of the houses in the neighborhood 
 had blown up there was really no telling when 
 the house in which we were dining would also 
 go. I really felt relieved when I got out of it. 
 
 Anything that is likely to attract attention 
 and which will blow up when one touches it 
 is called a "booby trap" by the British. Dur- 
 ing the following up of the German retreat 
 so many British soldiers were injured by these 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 123 
 
 traps that orders were issued to the effect that 
 anyone being injured by one of them would be 
 considered as having received a self-inflicted 
 wound. This order somewhat reduced the 
 number of casualties. 
 
 I spent some time in Arras, which had been 
 again bombarded by the Germans two days 
 before I arrived. The town had been aban- 
 doned by its inhabitants and most of it was in 
 ruins. North of Arras is Vimy Ridge, where 
 the Canadians gained undying fame. On the 
 way there we passed more leveled towns whose 
 names on the map alone showed where towns 
 formerly existed. Everywhere were dugouts, 
 trenches, wire entanglements and graves. The 
 Indians had not yet reached that point in their 
 cleaning. I saw everywhere German shell 
 cases, relics of when the Germans held the 
 ground, and German shrapnel and high ex- 
 plosive, British unused three inch shells, Brit- 
 ish fuse caps, British bandoleers, British cart- 
 ridges both in clips and loose on the ground, 
 and other things of similar nature which 
 showed the later occupancy of the ground by 
 the British. The German graves seemed to 
 be as carefully looked out for as British 
 graves. A wooden cross with the dead man^s 
 
124 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 name and regiment marks each British or 
 German grave, though some of the latter had 
 elaborate stones. The graves were grouped 
 as if, after an advance, the bodies from that 
 immediate locality had been gathered and 
 buried near where the men were killed. Some 
 distance to the rear, all the street signs were 
 in English. Close behind the trenches, the 
 signs frequently were in German. 
 
 The British get so accustomed to condi- 
 tions that they pay no attention to the proxim- 
 ity of the German lines when using the roads 
 in the rear. One day while at Vimy Ridge 
 on the road to Lens, which town was in pos- 
 session of the Germans, my guide, a British 
 Major, pointed out to me where the German 
 front and second line trenches were, and also 
 indicated some high ground to the rear which 
 he stated the British hoped soon to possess. 
 It appeared to be merely a desolate waste 
 upon which no human being could be seen. 
 I did a lot of thinking because it seemed to me 
 that if we could see the location of the Ger- 
 man trenches so clearly that the Germans 
 surely could see us. Intermittent firing was 
 going on at the time. We walked to the 
 Major's motor and went along a road parallel 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 125 
 
 to the German lines. It was broad daylight and 
 a clear day. After we had been proceeding 
 some few minutes, I asked a question. "Can- 
 not the Germans see us?" "Yes," he replied. 
 "Is it not dangerous going along like this, 
 within plain sight of the Germans?" I asked 
 further. "No, the Germans have not been 
 shelling automobiles on this road lately; they 
 will not turn their guns on us unless we get 
 stuck," he answered. "But we might get 
 stuck," I suggested. "That might not make 
 any difference," he replied, "we would then 
 have two chances : in the first place, the Ger- 
 mans might not open fire after all; and, in 
 the second place, they might not hit us if they 
 did." 
 
 All along the front excellent roads lead up 
 to the front trenches. When the Germans are 
 driven back, Indians, British workmen and 
 prisoners continue the building behind the 
 advancing British line. Road builders are a 
 very important part of a modern army. Back 
 of the trenches also are railroads. Far in the 
 rear are standard guage tracks with ordinary 
 trains which run to the danger zone where 
 trains run on narrow guage tracks. These 
 latter tracks can be built to the trenches them- 
 
126 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 selves and handcars can save much manual 
 labor. Railroad men are also a very impor- 
 tant adjunct to the modern army, and it is in 
 this capacity that many of our engineer regi- 
 ments are doing most valuable service at the 
 front. 
 
 Nearly all supplies are brought up at night, 
 and as a result the Germans put a barrage on 
 the roads, in the rear of the British trenches, 
 to prevent supply wagons from being 
 advanced. An old soldier can w^ell imagine the 
 excitement v^hen a barrage lands among a 
 convoy of mule teams. Even such a "staid 
 character" as an army mule may then show 
 signs of life. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WITH "BYNG of CAMBRAI" 
 
 It was a black night with only a few lonely 
 looking stars hanging low above the tree-tops 
 and a feeling of hushed expectancy filled the 
 damp warm summer night. It was the eve- 
 ning of the day that I arrived at Albert and I 
 had been invited to attend an entertainment 
 being given near Bapaume by the Tommies 
 of a departing division to the ofEcers of the 
 division that remained. Overhead was the 
 brooding sky of the lowlands. Along the hor- 
 izon, made dusky and far away by the mists, 
 an occasional star-shell rose up like a sky- 
 rocket and lighted for a moment the mutilated 
 trees. In the field beyond the jagged rem- 
 nants of a little village was a bomb-proof 
 shelter in the ground backed up to a pile of 
 earth thrown up by the heavy bombardment. 
 As we drew up before the door we could see 
 tiny cracks of light around the entrance and 
 the quiet figures of British sentinels who, with 
 their cumbersome equipment and their long 
 
128 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 habituation to the life of the trenches, have 
 come to seem almost part of the soil for which 
 they are so bravely fighting. In the dark mys- 
 tical evening they rose up like rocks or trees 
 until a pleasant English voice spoke a sharp 
 challenge. Within the shelter there was for 
 that part of France a brilliant scene. The 
 room both in size and shape resembled a hall. 
 At one end a stage had been erected with space 
 provided for the orchestra and camp chairs 
 had been set in rows, eked out by wooden 
 benches directly to the rear. In the front row 
 sat Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng and 
 his Generals. In the second row sat nurses, 
 and back of them all the officers according to 
 rank. To the very rear sat the lieutenants and 
 subalterns, who added loud and cheerful 
 applause to the general gaiety of the occasion. 
 The orchestra was made up of Tommies and 
 most of the music was American rag-time. 
 Why the British soldier should respond with 
 such unfailing delight to "I want to go back 
 to Michigan," is a question for psychologists 
 to solve. I don't suppose that one out of a 
 hundred of the men who march to battle 
 shouting the tune have the slightest idea where 
 or what Michigan is. It is the same with 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 129 
 
 many other typically American songs. 
 
 The show was excellent as all the per- 
 formers were professional entertainers, men 
 who had made a living before the war, by 
 doing just such stunts in the London Music 
 Halls. And from moment to moment at irre- 
 gular intervals all through the performance 
 there would come the distant boom of heavy 
 artillery and the nearer crash of bursting 
 shells. We were well within range of the 
 German gun-fire but no one paid the slightest 
 attention and the entertainment came to a suc- 
 cessful and hilarious conclusion. As we filed 
 out into the summer darkness there was a 
 crash and for a moment the night was lit up 
 like noon-day by a bursting shell and as a 
 British officer and I motored along a darkened 
 road parallel to the German lines a light sud- 
 denly flared up in the field at our left seem- 
 ingly only a few yards away. I assumed that 
 we had been heard and that the Germans were 
 firing at us, but my companion laughed and 
 remarked, "That is just a flare from the Ger- 
 man trenches. They are trying to light up 
 *No Man's Land,' they are afraid that we 
 may raid them." 
 
 My duties led me to the inspection of 
 
130 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 various anti-aircraft batteries up and down the 
 British lines just in the rear of the infantry 
 trenches. I visited one battery that had been 
 pushed up well under big gun-fire of the Ger- 
 mans but the location of which the latter had 
 not yet discovered. The gun was concealed 
 in a hollow and on either side there were the 
 dugouts in which the gun crews lived. The 
 men seemed fairly comfortable considering 
 the usual Somme fall weather conditions and 
 their proximity to the enemy. After having 
 a cup of tea with the young lieutenant in com- 
 mand, in his dugout, which contained a 
 bureau, table and bed, captured from the Ger- 
 mans, I began to retrace my steps. It was 
 raining, there was almost a foot of mud and 
 water in the trenches and the night was so 
 dark I could hardly see a foot in front of my 
 face. As I started off in the darkness, the 
 lieutenant casually called out, "Ohl By the 
 way! If you don't take the first road to the 
 right, you will be in the German lines!" I 
 am glad to say that my companion and I 
 located and took the first road to the right. 
 
 The British throughout the Somme had 
 captured the ridges and commanding places 
 desired by them preparatory to their next 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 131 
 
 drive. Some miles to the rear were the rest 
 billets where the troops go to recuperate after 
 their turn of duty in the trenches. By these 
 billets were fields and it was quite a usual 
 sight to see football games taking place with 
 the same enthusiasm that surrounds a match 
 at home. The houses of the men were made 
 of iron and looked much like large sewer 
 pipes except that they were flat on the bottom. 
 The ingenuity of the soldiers can make them 
 very comfortable and everything possible was 
 done for the comfort of the men. The worst 
 of the front is the monotony and to overcome 
 this, public entertainments for the men and 
 officers were given and much private enter- 
 taining, especially among the officers. The 
 British have their afternoon tea even at the 
 front and I can well imagine a British Tommy 
 sipping his tea at the proper time while an 
 intense bombardment goes on overhead. 
 
 In England and at the British front, I 
 learned to respect the British officers that I 
 met. They appeared to be earnest gentlemen 
 who were giving their best to their country. 
 They treated us with all the thoughtful kind- 
 ness that one person could use towards another 
 and they seemed anxious that Great Britain 
 
132 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 and the United States might be drawn closer 
 together. Frequently they talked of America. 
 One night several officers were gathered to- 
 gether around a wooden table in a damp and 
 dim-lit dugout and they amused themselves 
 by telling the place in the United States they 
 would like to visit were they able to go. One 
 selected Atlantic City ; another selected New- 
 port ; and all the others selected Coney Island. 
 The officers that one meets at the service 
 schools in England, particularly, and at the 
 front, may be English, or Scotch, or Irish, or 
 Welsh, or Colonial, but they are going at their 
 task with a seriousness and steadfastness of 
 purpose that augurs well for the success of 
 the allied cause. 
 
 The interest of Americans has been directed 
 toward the Americans stationed with General 
 Byng's army. When General Byng sur- 
 prised the Germans and everyone else by al- 
 most reaching Cambrai in an attack led by 
 tanks and unheralded by gunfire, it was the 
 duty of the American engineers to build tracks 
 and operate trains in the rear of his advancing 
 army. In the Somme valley during the winter 
 months, the mud is deep and the best of roads 
 are almost impassible. Tracks are not affected 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 133 
 
 by the weather and are useful not only as a 
 means of bringing up ammunition and sup- 
 plies but also for the heavier guns which are 
 brought up and fired from rails. 
 
 Britain lacks technical men. At the begin- 
 ning of the war under the vicious volunteer 
 system, large numbers of technical men en- 
 listed as privates in the first British Army and 
 were killed in France. Today Britain feels 
 the loss of these men from whose education 
 and training she received no benefit. America 
 fortunately has been able largely to fill the 
 breach by supplying both Britain and France 
 with technical men. I frequently saw these 
 American engineers on the Somme. Before 
 the advance on Cambrai they were industri- 
 ously aiding in moving supplies to the front 
 and cleaning up and sorting those objects left 
 on the old Somme battlefield of 1916 which 
 might be of further use. When I saw them, 
 they wore their campaign hats and though 
 they were within range of the bigger German 
 guns, none of them that I saw, wore the shrap- 
 nel helmet. The only ones that seemed to 
 have rifles were sentries. When working they 
 appeared to be unarmed so far as I could see. 
 
 From my knowledge of the Somme, I can 
 
134 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 well imagine what happened to these men 
 when the Germans repulsed General Byng's 
 attacks and broke through in their turn. The 
 duty of the engineers was to have roads built 
 and tracks laid in rear of the advancing army 
 right up to the front trenches and there they 
 were when the Germans succeeded in break- 
 ing the British line in the region of Gouzeau- 
 court. When the Germans pushed the British 
 aside and smashed through their lines, they 
 came upon the Americans right in the rear 
 and when British reinforcements came up the 
 Americans were naturally caught between the 
 forces of the combatants. Without shrapnel 
 helmets or Hfles they are said to have escaped 
 by lying in shell holes while the British fired 
 over them and there they remained until the 
 advancing British were near enough to enable 
 them to seize whatever weapons were avail- 
 able and join their ally. Until the immediate 
 danger was past, these engineers served in the 
 ranks with the British and helped withstand 
 the German onslaughts. All of this was not 
 without its cost for many of them fell and 
 added their lives to the toll of the dead on the 
 battlefield of the Somme. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 STORIES FROM THE TRENCHES 
 
 The horrors of war have their funny side 
 if one can forget for a moment their grue- 
 someness. Many wierd incidents relieve the 
 monotony of trench life. Once in the Somme 
 region a portion of the front trenches was held 
 by a regiment that was new and particu- 
 larly ineffective at making or resisting raids. 
 Nearly every night the Germans raided its 
 trenches and almost nightly many of its men 
 were killed by the German raiders. The regi- 
 ment was a failure either at resistance or at 
 retaliating successfully. Finally the general 
 commanding in that sector determined to 
 make a change and he placed in that portion 
 of the line a regiment famous for its raiding 
 ability. That night the Germans raided as; 
 usual but the new regiment was prepared.. 
 Next morning the Germans at dawn could see: 
 from their lines the heads of their late com- 
 rades placed on posts along the outer edge of 
 the British trench. This effectually put a 
 
136 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Stop to further German raiding in that portion 
 of the lines. 
 
 Another story is told about a British general 
 who was only 27 years of age. Originally an 
 officer of New Zealand troops, General C. B. 
 Freyberg is one of the most picturesque char- 
 acters that this war has developed. Once 
 when the warships were going through the 
 Dardanelles, he volunteered to swim ashore 
 and light a flare to guide the ship, which feat 
 was successfully performed. Later at the Bat- 
 tle of the Somme, he led a division in a bril- 
 liant charge and captured Beaucourt though 
 four times wounded. He has won the Victoria 
 Cross and every other reward for bravery 
 given by Great Britain. In the early part of 
 the war, he is said to have been bandaging the 
 wounds of a German when the latter shot him. 
 As a result of this treachery on the part of a 
 man he was befriending, he has become ex- 
 tremely bitter against the Germans and insists 
 on leading in person all charges of his troop. 
 Each night he prowls in "No Man's Land" 
 looking for a chance to crawl into the German 
 trenches and capture or kill Germans. He 
 has been wounded seven times and when I 
 was in England was again in a hospital. A 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 137 
 
 Major told me that a patrol frequently re- 
 ported at night, '^All quiet between the lines 
 except for a brigadier-general prowling 
 about." 
 
 A friend of mine was driving an ambulance 
 over a rough road behind the lines. He had 
 with him a wounded German prisoner and a 
 Turco. The night was dark, the road was 
 rough and my friend was having trouble get- 
 ting his car past the convoys going in the other 
 direction. He felt a continuous tapping on 
 his shoulder, but at first paid no attention. At 
 last in exasperation he turned around and saw 
 the wounded Turco cut the German's throat. 
 The Turco had thought that the driver would 
 enjoy this spectacle. 
 
 Shell shock has curious effects. Once, I 
 have been told, a man lay twenty-four hours 
 apparently quite dead in a trench. Suddenly 
 a shell burst within a few feet of him. The 
 man leaped to his feet shouting, "This is too 
 hot for me," and rushed to the rear. Appar- 
 ently the shell, bursting so near to him, had 
 reversed the effect of a previous shell that had 
 seemingly killed him. 
 
 There is another story of a man whose hip 
 was broken so that he could not move from a 
 
138 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 shell hole near the German lines. If the Ger- 
 mans had known he was there, they could eas- 
 ily have reached him and killed him. While 
 he was lying in the shell hole, unable to move, 
 a British soldier found him and stayed with 
 him in the hope of eventually getting him 
 back to the British lines. Each night the well 
 soldier sallied forth in search of food which 
 he obtained by raiding the neighboring Ger- 
 man trenches. With food thus obtained, he 
 sustained the wounded soldier and himself. 
 For six weeks the well soldier, who at any 
 time could have gone to his own lines but 
 could not have returned to the aid of the 
 wounded man, raided the German trenches 
 and kept the wounded man and himself alive. 
 One night he went on a raid as usual but did 
 not return. The next day the wounded man, 
 despairing of his former companion's return, 
 determined to try to make his way back. He 
 was making the best progress possible when 
 some British going forward found him and 
 brought him to their lines. The wounded 
 man told the story of how he had been tended 
 for six weeks by an English soldier who at 
 the constant risk of his own life stayed with 
 him and provisioned them both by raids of 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 139 
 
 the German trenches. The British general in 
 command of the troops in that sector did not 
 believe the soldier's story and directed that 
 an X-ray photograph be taken of the break in 
 the soldier's thigh. When the photograph was 
 developed, it showed a six weeks' growth and 
 malformation, which it was not possible to 
 break anew. The wounded man was perma- 
 nently injured but his life had been saved. 
 When the photograph showed that the man's 
 story was true, the British tried to find the 
 soldier who had saved the wounded man's 
 life so that he might be awarded the Victoria 
 Cross. The man was never found. 
 
 I have heard it said that this war has been 
 full of incidents for which men were formerly 
 awarded the Victoria Cross, but which are 
 now matters of everyday occurrence. The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade is quite sur- 
 passed by one charge north of Arras, where 
 the British massed thousands of cavalry for 
 breaking through the German lines to follow 
 up the charge that would be made by the 
 infantry. The advance was ordered, the 
 infantry charged and then the cavalry. The 
 hope was that the German lines could be 
 rolled back on either flank by pouring through 
 
140 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 thousands of cavalry past the infantry at that 
 point. The cavalry captured much ground, 
 but at a fearful cost. About sixty per cent, of 
 the men, and ninety per cent, of the horses, 
 were put out of action. The stench from the 
 bodies of the horses could be smelled in that 
 sector for months afterwards. 
 
 One of the most awful stories told me at the 
 British front bears on Germany's treatment of 
 her own women. Statements have been 
 repeatedly made and printed in the papers of 
 the United States, that Germany, realizing 
 that she cannot win at this time a decisive vic- 
 tory, is striving for an inconclusive peace with 
 the purpose of preparing for another war in 
 about twenty years. By that time, she believes 
 that she can make, with her spies, all nations 
 except France, Great Britain and the United 
 States, impotent or her allies. The three 
 countries mentioned will have lost so many 
 men in this war that the ordinary birth rate 
 will not replace their losses by that time. A 
 British officer told me that a certificate had 
 been captured which designated a certain Ger- 
 man soldier to act as the ofiicial husband of a 
 portion of a German city, with a provision that 
 if he finished his labors in that portioti by a 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 141 
 
 certain time, he should continue his duties in 
 another section. Thus the normal birthrate of 
 the Teutonic powers will be raised to the 
 point where Deutchland Uber Alles will be 
 no longer a dream. The Germans are a prac- 
 tical people. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE FRENCH FRONT ON THE AISNE 
 
 One of the best and most respected and 
 most feared Generals in all France is the com- 
 mander of the 10th French Army, General 
 Duchene. He has the reputation of being the 
 least approachable man in all France, a brave 
 and silent soldier. It was to General Duchene 
 that our commission was sent in order to 
 receive permission to visit the French front on 
 the Aisne. French officers whom he first met 
 looked at us with awe and pity when we told 
 them where we were going. They were evi- 
 dently sorry for any ofiicer, and especially a 
 stranger, who had to report to so terrible a 
 personage. The French officer detailed to 
 accompany us was almost rigid with fright. 
 But luck was with us and by the purest acci- 
 dent we were given an introduction to the 
 General unsurpassed for absurdity. It was 
 the most ridiculous accident that could befall 
 three well-meaning and innocent Americans 
 in the presence of foreign greatness. 
 
144 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 We had with us a German dog, a dachs- 
 hund, captured in the French raid, and being 
 cared for by the French officer as a pet. The 
 little dog liked us and went with us every- 
 where. Although we had not intended to take 
 him to call on the General, he slipped behind 
 us into the ante-room where we were waiting 
 for the General to receive us. We quieted him 
 down and put him out of sight. We waited 
 Ifor a few moments in apprehensive silence and 
 then the great doors swung open and we came 
 into the presence of the man of ferocious mem- 
 ory. He was standing against the mantel and, 
 as we approached him, he returned our salute 
 and stared at us with his penetrating gaze. 
 Just at that moment there was a wild rush of 
 little feet, — the General's dog, one of the 
 things he loves best in life, had spied the Ger- 
 man dog in the ante-room. There was a fusil- 
 lade of snaps and grows and a battle royal 
 began in the middle of the General's reception 
 room. Before we could separate them, the 
 French dog had come out victorious, and as 
 we removed our mascot, in chagrin, the Gen- 
 eral straightened up and smiled at us. We 
 were told later, many times, that it was the 
 first time in the history of the French Army 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 145 
 
 that General Duchene had smiled. He asked 
 us several questions, abruptly, but kindly. He 
 asked me how long I had been in military ser- 
 vice, and I answered that I had first entered 
 the American Army at the time of the war 
 with Spain. To forestall the possible com- 
 ment about our being ^'ancient and honor- 
 able," I added that my companion, Captain 
 Wilder, was an engineer, an expert on time- 
 fuses and explosives. Our answers seemed to 
 please him. When we described the infor- 
 mation which we desired to obtain, he directed 
 the French officer with us to introduce us to 
 the Chief of Artillery, who would see that 
 everything possible was done for us. He then 
 shook hands with us most politely and we 
 departed. For weeks afterwards, we kept 
 meeting French officers who wanted to do 
 their best to smooth down the impression of 
 fierceness that we must have received from 
 General Duchene. We never told them about 
 the dogs. 
 
 All battlefields nowadays are very much 
 alike. The typographical distinction of the. 
 Chemin des Dames, over which the tide of 
 battle had poured back and forth so furiously,, 
 is the long ridge which runs down the center 
 
146 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 of a wide and fertile plain. The Road of the 
 Ladies runs along this ridge. As we arrived 
 at the French front, preparations were in 
 progress for the opening of the great offensive 
 made by the French a few days later. The 
 roads on the French side of the ridge, excel- 
 lent military roads running to all points of 
 importance and up to the French trenches, 
 were lined with curious military camions 
 filled with the Alpine Chasseurs, who are the 
 shock troops of the French. The camions 
 were carefully covered so that the Germans 
 might not know that crack regiments were 
 being brought up against them. The roads 
 were camouflaged wherever they could be 
 seen from the German captive balloons. These 
 balloons are stationed over the trenches. It is 
 difficult to reach these balloons with gun fire 
 because they are far to the rear, but it is a 
 favorite game for the aviators to try to drop 
 incendiary bombs on the enemy balloon, 
 bringing it crashing to the ground. The aero- 
 plane will mount high in the air, and then 
 diving suddenly, will drop a bomb. The 
 observer in the balloon is supplied with a 
 parachute. When his balloon is struck he 
 jumps off in space and the parachute is sup- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 147 
 
 posed to bring him safely to the ground. 
 Usually it does. 
 
 As we drove along one of these beautiful 
 military roads we passed a steady tramp, 
 tramp of French soldiers going to the front. 
 We passed enormous loads of supplies of every 
 kind for the great battle which soon followed. 
 Although the camouflage made by strips of 
 sheeting about ten feet high is between 
 the roads and the enemy, the Germans 
 take no chances of missing anything im- 
 portant, and kept up a steady bombardment 
 of shrapnel. As we drove along, there was a 
 sudden crash and a shrapnel shell burst high 
 in the air about sixty yards to our right. The 
 French captain paid no attention to it. I 
 eyed it with considerable mistrust. The chauf- 
 feur put on a bit more speed. That was all. 
 
 That night I spent at Battery Headquar- 
 ters in a building which appeared to be an Inn, 
 where a make-shift bed had been arranged for 
 me in the dining-room. It was more luxurious 
 than anything I had expected at the front. I 
 was told that every building in the vicinity 
 had been shelled by the Germans except this 
 one, probably because some trees concealed it 
 from the German balloons. I hoped that they 
 
148 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 would not discover us that night. There was 
 an alarm of German aeroplanes in the night, 
 but I was too tired to get excited and went to 
 sleep again. The next morning at breakfast, 
 I learned that the Germans had tried to gas us 
 in the night. 
 
 The arrangement of a modern battle line is 
 fairly clear by this time to the American peo- 
 ple, but the exact position of the anti-aircraft 
 artillery may not be so clearly understood. 
 The extreme front facing the enemy are the 
 infantry trenches. Directly behind these are 
 machine guns, which not only protect the 
 infantry from attack from above, but force the 
 hostile aeroplane to rise high enough in the 
 air to be within reach of the shells of the anti- 
 aircraft guns in the rear. The machine guns, 
 therefore, by firing at hostile aeroplanes, force 
 them to rise to such a height that the bursts of 
 the anti-aircraft guns can take effect. 
 
 Many of these anti-aircraft guns are cleverly 
 hidden from the German eyes. I visited one 
 anti-aircraft gun which was set up in an 
 elaborate system of trenches and dugouts. I 
 remarked upon the excellence and care with 
 which the trenches had been devised. "Yes," 
 said the officer in charge of the batteries, "the 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 149 
 
 trenches are good, but we did not build them ; 
 they were built for a field battery which was 
 here for some time until the Germans got the 
 exact range and put it out of existence. The 
 Germans, having the exact range, do not 
 believe that anyone would be crazy enough to 
 come back, but here we are." 
 
 On the sides of the trenches were dugouts 
 which inside appeared to be veritable houses. 
 Other dugouts were dressing stations and store 
 rooms. In other dugouts, where soldiers 
 lived, there were sometimes amusing names on 
 signs over the doors. On a muddy road com- 
 ing from the direction of the infantry trenches, 
 I saw an American Ambulance driven by an 
 American Ambulance Service man. No one 
 seemed to pay any attention to men slightly 
 wounded. I saw one man sitting on the road- 
 side, with his head in his hands and a small 
 pool of blood on the ground in front of him. 
 He was probably on his way to a dressing 
 station in the rear. 
 
 We crossed a bridge which was covered 
 with little black pieces of high explosive 
 shells, showing how the Germans had tried to 
 kill persons on their way across. Bushels of 
 such souvenirs could have been swept up on 
 
150 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 the bridge. We passed a farm completely in 
 ruins, and I picked up a large piece of an 
 eight-inch shell that had perhaps aided in 
 doing the damage. There were many graves 
 at this place. Proceeding further, I saw some 
 objects on the ground and asked what they 
 were. We were told not to touch them as they 
 were hand grenades that had not exploded and 
 which might explode if touched. Everywhere 
 on the ground about, were fragments from 
 German shells of all sizes, and other odds and 
 ends of a battlefield. From our left we could 
 hear the noise caused by the firing of a French 
 ten-inch gun above the other noises of the bat- 
 tlefield. These big guns are pushed into posi- 
 tion on the battlefield by engines on tracks, 
 and the guns are fired from the tracks. One 
 amusing sight was that of a locomotive pulling 
 a heavy train of cars and advancing down an 
 ordinary wagon road. At first we could not 
 make out the cause of the apparent miracle, 
 but as we looked more closely we saw a squad 
 of soldiers rushing back and forth in front of 
 the train and laying down rails for it to run 
 upon. This war has many strange sights. 
 
 We went beyond the line of anti-aircraft 
 batteries, beyond where two days before, a 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 151 
 
 mobile battery had been demolished, to a point 
 just back of where the machine gun trenches 
 were situated. Overhead the German shells 
 were bursting, while around us were great 
 shell holes where some had landed. The loca- 
 tion of the German trenches could be plainly 
 seen, as well as the soldiers in the French first 
 line infantry trenches. We could hear the 
 rattle of the German machine guns. The Ger- 
 man big guns were firing far over our heads at 
 the French field batteries to the rear, and the 
 French returned the fire over our heads at the 
 German batteries. Frequently, the Germans 
 dropped large shells, called **Big Berthas," 
 after the lady proprietor of the Krupp works, 
 which made a black explosion about sixty feet 
 high and about thirty feet across. Near where 
 I was standing, the Germans began to fire 
 shrapnel, and one exploded about thirty yards 
 away. I heard the bang and the succeeding 
 whizzing as the shrapnel balls went past. Any 
 shrapnel which can be heard is apt to be all 
 right. When one bursts close to a person and 
 he does not hear the balls go whizzing past, 
 that's the one for his friends to fear. 
 
 At night, the firing still continues, but at 
 irregular intervals. Both combatants, at dusk 
 
152 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 and at night, shell all roads leading to the 
 infantry trenches to prevent the bringing up of 
 food and ammunition and other supplies for 
 the men in the trenches. At frequent intervals 
 during the night, both sides send up lights. 
 The French flares only light up for an 
 instant. The German flares light for some 
 time. Rockets go up at intervals. The whole 
 scene would be a wonderful pyrotechnic dis- 
 play if it did not signify the slaughter of men. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 FIGHTING AT CHEMIN-DES-DAMES 
 
 So MUCH has been said and written about 
 the tragic side of war that those at home are 
 apt to forget at times that there is no game in 
 the world as thrilling as war. It is sport car- 
 ried to the nth power. It is a game played by 
 enormous numbers with all the resources of 
 the nation to call upon, and with life or death 
 the stakes. It is natural for those who come 
 to look on at the war to write out its sad results, 
 but one might as well try to give an adequate 
 description of a dinner party by telling about 
 the dish-washing as to give an impression of 
 war by describing the suffering and desolation 
 which follow in its wake. To one who has 
 had any experience of this great game of war, 
 everything else in life thereafter seems a little 
 dull. 
 
 And of all the varied phases of modern war- 
 fare, none has this element of sport more 
 strongly marked than aircraft and anti-air- 
 craft combat. When I was at the French 
 
154 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 front, they were preparing for the infantry 
 thrust by General Le Mestre towards Laon, 
 which later brought them about eleven thou- 
 sand prisoners and one hundred and sixty guns. 
 Down long white poplar bordered roads, com- 
 pany after company of French troops were 
 marching, stoically and in silence. There was 
 a sort of pathetic patience about the way in 
 which they carried the heavy burden of the 
 war, and yet nothing could have been less 
 pathetic than their heroism, when a few days 
 later, they actually went over the top. 
 
 The sky was full of French aeroplanes, 
 observing and photographing the German 
 lines and getting ready for the infantry attack 
 that was about to take place. Unusual hostile 
 aerial activity indicates one of three things, an 
 impending attack by the enemy, the relieving 
 by the enemy of the arm holding the opposite 
 lines, or a fear on the part of the enemy that 
 you are about to attack. If no occasion has 
 been given for the third situation, one of the 
 other two will probably take place. If the 
 hostile aerial activity is excessive, it is a sign 
 of an impending attack by the enemy, gen- 
 erally in about three days. 
 
 The Germans use high explosives which 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 155 
 
 produce black smoke, and the French use 
 shrapnel which produce white smoke. As 
 the French planes circled above the German 
 trenches, the air was filled with puffs of black 
 smoke. Suddenly, a German aeroplane 
 would dart over the French trenches, and the 
 French anti-aircraft guns would speak in their 
 turn. It is only seldom that a plane is actually 
 struck by a shell from the anti-aircraft guns. 
 The enemy is more apt to be frightened back 
 to his own lines. 
 
 Each clear day this wonderful panorama in 
 the air was repeated. Once I saw a German 
 aeroplane fly near one of the French batteries 
 with which I had been. It fired two shots and 
 the aeroplane just managed to drop, appar- 
 ently disabled, into the German lines. 
 Because the aeroplane reached its own lines, 
 these shots, which were right on top of the 
 target, were called misses. Early one morning, 
 two German aeroplanes tried to attack one of 
 the French observation balloons. A French 
 battery nearby placed a barrage between the 
 aeroplane and the point above the balloon. 
 The bombing aeroplane turned and gave up 
 the attempt, followed by the other plane. This 
 was extremely good shooting, but unfor- 
 
156 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 tunately, the position of the French gun was 
 now known. Soon after the German aero- 
 plane had returned, shrapnel began to burst 
 over the French anti-aircraft gun that had 
 done the shooting. The crew at once called up 
 their own batteries, which concentrated on the 
 German gun and effectually stopped its fire. 
 The next day the French changed the position 
 of their anti-aircraft battery. 
 
 The French are extremely clever at anti- 
 aircraft artillery, and the German is not 
 nearly so good. I have often noticed black 
 puffs and looked in vain for the French aero- 
 plane, only to find that it was a mile or so in 
 another direction; but when white puffs 
 appeared against the blue the German plane 
 ivas never very far away. This is good shoot- 
 ing, because it is considered a record to bring 
 down one enemy plane for every six thousand 
 shots. 
 
 The Germans were constantly bombing the 
 French towns in rear of the French front. At 
 Fimes, back of the then Aisne battlefield, I saw 
 three private houses in the main part of the 
 town, that had been entirely demolished. This 
 was the work of two bombs on one night, and 
 a third bomb about two weeks later. The 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 157 
 
 smaller towns of France, near the front, had 
 a hard time when attacked by aircraft It was 
 impossible to give every town an adequate air- 
 craft defence because the anti-aircraft guns 
 were needed at the front and in the defence of 
 Paris and at other important points. As a 
 result of this scarcity of guns, the people of 
 the smaller towns were often forced to submit 
 to bombing without being able to fight back at 
 the raiders. Germany did not neglect these 
 opportunities of killing helpless old men, 
 women and children, and so the number of 
 dead non-combatants is quite large. 
 
 The French, however, are employing 
 against the Germans the one means which 
 seems to be effective in lessening to some 
 degrees, German cruelties, and that is retalia- 
 tion. For some time, the French have sent 
 their aeroplanes over Germany, and when a 
 French town has been bombed, a German 
 town suffers also. This has decreased the num- 
 ber of German attacks considerably. It is only 
 lately that the British have employed retalia- 
 tion. 
 
 When the Germans first raided England, 
 many people clamored for revenge, but the old 
 element said, "Britons will never bomb Ger- 
 
158 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 man cities with their civilian populations, no 
 matter how much British cities may be 
 bombed." These English took upon them- 
 selves a sort of superior air of righteousness. 
 Other English said, ^'Let us bring home to the 
 Germans, themselves, the horrors of what they 
 are doing and perhaps they will stop." The 
 first party kept England from revenging their 
 cruelties in kind during all the first years of 
 the war. While I was in London, whenever 
 the German aeroplanes bombed London or 
 other parts of England, the British aeroplanes 
 responded by going over and bombing some 
 fortified city in German Belgium. Poor Bel- 
 gium, it did seem to many people that she had 
 suffered enough without being bombed by the 
 British because of German raids while the 
 German cities went free. Finally, public 
 opinion became so strong in favor of retalia- 
 tion, that Lloyd George promised that it 
 would take place, and Britain has just begun 
 effectively to show the Germans what their 
 own methods are like. 
 
 The civilian population suffers most from 
 these air raids, because the infantry canton- 
 ments back of all the front line trenches are 
 carefully protected with anti-aircraft guns and 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 159 
 
 the Germans are afraid to attack them too 
 often. But it is impossible to protect, ade- 
 quately, every village in France, and the Ger- 
 mans thus prefer to bomb the little home 
 villages, and it is the old men, women 
 and children who are forced to take the 
 consequences. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 THE CAPTAIN IS GASSED 
 
 While I was making the observations, 
 described in the previous chapter, along the 
 Aisne front, Captain Wilder, in pursuance of 
 his duty, had joined the French officers in the 
 anti-aircraft dugouts behind the first line 
 trenches. It was there that the only serious 
 accident befell our party. 
 
 The anti-aircraft dugouts are built behind 
 the infantry trenches in the position that best 
 affords opportunity for firing upon the enemy 
 planes. The actual artillery positions are 
 moved from day to day. Positions are pre- 
 pared in advance, and every day, after firing 
 a certain number of shots, the battery is shifted 
 to one of these new positions. So carefully 
 have they been arranged, that firing is com- 
 menced within five minutes of arrival. The 
 living quarters of the officers are some little 
 distance from the guns. The dugout in which 
 the Captain and his two companies were 
 quartered, lay behind a small rise of ground, 
 
162 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 sheltered by clumps of trees. It was a simple, 
 bare room, almost entirely underground, 
 shored up with rough planks and re-enforced 
 by sandbags to protect the men within from 
 bursting shrapnel. The furniture was made of 
 rough boards and bits of packing cases, much 
 like a rough camp in the lumber district in 
 our own far West. 
 
 It is amusing to see the way in which man 
 adapts himself to the most extraordinary con- 
 ditions. The French officers had been living 
 in this dugout for some time, and there were 
 all manner of devices whereby the little 
 uncomfortable temporary room was made into 
 a habitable dwelling. No nation in the world 
 knows less than the French about the sort of 
 thing that we call camping, and yet here were 
 these two Frenchmen from the city, adapting 
 themselves with enthusiasm to just the sort of 
 thing that delights the heart of American boy- 
 hood. Neat shelves had been built along the 
 walls. Strings had been arranged so that the 
 doors and windows could be opened and closed 
 by the officers without getting out of bed. The 
 beds were rough pine bunks, built against the 
 wall. And most amusing of all, the sheets 
 were made in the form of bags, as a protection 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 163 
 
 against the ever-present cooty. If one of these 
 unwelcome visitors was discovered during the 
 night, all that was necessary was to get up, 
 turn the sheets inside out, and crawl in again. 
 The bag-shaped arrangement was a protection 
 against any further annoyance. 
 
 If there is one thing that the French do well, 
 it is to maintain the amenities of life against 
 adverse circumstances. The meals were served 
 in this rough and make-shift dwelling with as 
 much care and precision as though the pine 
 table was in the dining-room of some villa of 
 Southern France, and the tin dishes were the 
 silver service of a gentleman. The orderlies 
 brought in the meals and served them to the 
 officers. Every day for dinner there were 
 hors d'cEuvres, soup, meat and vegetables, 
 usually a salad, and some kind of dessert. The 
 French officers assured the Captain that this 
 had been their fare ever since the outbreak of 
 the war, and that they had almost never missed 
 a meal. Like all discomforts, the inconveni- 
 ences of war seem worse at a distance than they 
 do upon the spot. The only indication that 
 the dugout was within range of the German 
 guns was the fact that when the dinner was 
 brought forward from the kitchen in the rear, 
 
164 , WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 two men always carried it. Instead of one man 
 carrying all the soup and all the meat, while 
 the other carried all the vegetables and all the 
 dessert, the food was so divided that each man 
 was carrying with him a complete dinner, so 
 that if one man was struck by a shell on the 
 way, the olfBcers need not go hungry. 
 
 It was a pleasant summer night, and Cap- 
 tain Wilder and his two companions had gone 
 to sleep. It had been a quiet day and the Ger- 
 mans seemed to be resting up for some attack. 
 The door of the little dugout was open to let 
 in the summer-scented air, and peace seemed 
 to reign over the countryside. Only an occa- 
 sional distant booming sound indicated the 
 presence of the enemy. In the small hours of 
 the early morning, when sleep is deepest, an 
 orderly appeared in the doorway and rousing 
 the officers, announced the presence of gas. It 
 was customary when a gas attack was impend- 
 ing to close all doors and windows of the dug- 
 out, and to sprinkle water over the muslin 
 window coverings, which take the place of 
 panes of glass. The gas commonly in use at 
 that time, at the front, had an affinity for 
 water, and if the muslin window curtains were 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 165 
 
 thoroughly soaked, the gas did not penetrate 
 them. 
 
 The French ofBcers, having instructed the 
 orderly to proceed accordingly, lay down and 
 went to sleep again. But accidents will hap- 
 pen in the best regulated armies, and the 
 orderly did not latch the door. A few minutes 
 later, Captain Wilder, who had been asleep 
 during all the excitement, was awakened by 
 a heavy odor of gas. He found the two French 
 officers with the tears streaming down their 
 faces, stumbling about the dugout setting out 
 pans of water as best they could. Fortunately, 
 the gas had come from some little distance, and 
 had been so weakened that after a brief treat- 
 ment, all three men were able to resume their 
 duties. But it was some weeks before the Cap- 
 tain fully regained the use of his voice, and 
 many months before attacks of the poisoning 
 had ceased to recur. 
 
 Of all the weapons of modern warfare, 
 poison gas seems to be the crudest and the 
 most infuriating. The modern soldier can 
 respect an opponent who meets him with bul- 
 lets or with cold steel, but the poison gas that 
 creeps up in the night, suffocating and poison- 
 ing him, seems to any brave man like a 
 
166 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 dastardly and barbarous weapon. The fact 
 that the allied armies have been forced to 
 adopt poison gas in sheer self-defence, does not 
 mitigate the anger and horror of the French 
 and English soldiers against the nation which 
 invented such a weapon. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WHAT FRANCE THINKS 
 
 Two QUESTIONS have been asked me more 
 than any others since I have returned from the 
 war zone. One of them is, "Is it true that 
 France is exhausted?"; and the other, "What 
 do the French think about the outcome of the 
 war." There is but one answer to both. France 
 is not exhausted; and France will fight to a 
 victorious conclusion if it takes her last man, 
 her last pound of food, and her last franc. But 
 France is undoubtedly tired. For the first two 
 years of the war she did far more than her 
 share, owing to the almost completely unpre- 
 pared condition of Great Britain. With insuf- 
 ficient guns, ammunition, food, clothing, 
 organization, trained men and everything else 
 that makes an efficient army, France, like 
 Britain, was obliged to undergo huge unnec- 
 essary losses because her men were not fight- 
 ing with the advantages possessed by their 
 opponents. It has been said that Great Britain 
 could have saved the lives of 200,000 of her 
 
168 WAR TIME GRANGE 
 
 men, now dead, by having been adequately 
 prepared. How many more lives of FrencK 
 soldiers might have been saved, considering 
 that the French were obliged to defend a front 
 originally nearly six times that of the British? 
 
 While France sustained the main burden of 
 keeping back the enemy, the British gained 
 the necessary time to prepare and perfect that 
 wonderful organization that has equalled, and 
 is surpassing, that of the Germans ; but France 
 is tired. She is like the relay runner who, hav- 
 ing run another man's relay besides his own, 
 needs a rest before he runs again. Give France 
 a little chance to rest and she will come back 
 stronger than ever. 
 
 And it is we who are giving the French the 
 necessary help. With our wealth, with our 
 enormous population, with our skill in organi- 
 zation and in invention, and with the glorious 
 and prompt response which we have made to 
 France's cry for help, there is no longer any 
 doubt whatever, either as to the outcome of the 
 war or as to the encouragement and moral 
 support which we have given France. Never- 
 theless, we must not be too optimistic. Often I 
 have heard Americans speak to the French 
 about events which will happen "when we 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 169 
 
 invade Germany." And the answer is always 
 the same, "It will be very difficult." When a 
 Frenchman says that, he has much the same 
 look of wistful sadness as when he uses the 
 phrase "After the war." The French have 
 fought so long and so gallantly, they have 
 worked so hard and suffered so much, that the 
 longing for peace with victory seems to them 
 almost like something which has been prom- 
 ised them in another life. 
 
 The French are filled with enthusiasm over 
 the splendid progress that we have made, and 
 their expectations are without limit. One 
 rather amusing aspect of this intense faith in 
 our power is their firm belief that we are the 
 most inventive people in the world. 
 
 I was constantly asked, "Que fait Monsieur 
 Edison?" The French would not be aston- 
 ished in the slightest if the inventors of the 
 United States developed a new means of war- 
 fare that would revolutionize all present 
 methods. In fact, they rather expect that 
 something of the sort will take place. In their 
 minds, they do not consider at all improbable 
 that the country that produced the telegraph, 
 the telephone, the aeroplane, the submarine, 
 and nearly every other invention of impor- 
 
170 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 tance, will now, when put to a test for its nat- 
 ional existence, produce something of even 
 greater moment. Sometimes I wondered if 
 the French were already not a bit disap- 
 pointed that we, to date, had done nothing 
 startling. 
 
 It had been my good fortune to be present 
 as one of the officers of the guard of honor 
 when the first French mission was received by 
 the Mayor of New York, at the New York 
 City Hall, and I heard Viviani's stirring 
 address on that occasion, and saw "Papa 
 Joffre," when called upon for a speech, throw 
 a kiss to the cheering crowd assembled in the 
 Aldermanic Chamber. It was equally my 
 good fortune to be present, as a member of the 
 Mayor's Reception Committee, at the banquet 
 given to the members of the French and Brit- 
 ish Missions at the Waldorf-Astoria. 
 
 I frequently told French officers about the 
 enthusiasm of the crowds when the French 
 Mission was in New York City, and they were 
 always interested. A French officer told me 
 that Joffre, impressed by the obviously sincere 
 welcome and intense enthusiasm of the cheer- 
 ing crowds surrounding him, turned and said 
 to a French officer near him, ''If these people 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 171 
 
 mean what they say, I do not need to take the 
 time to ask their government for their services. 
 I can get them right now to fight to a finish 
 against the Germans." JoflFre and Viviani 
 were impressed by the sincerity of their wel- 
 come and the good feeling that they have 
 spread throughout France will endure. 
 
 France has suffered terribly. With much of 
 her country obliterated and the inhabitants 
 taken into slavery, with her sons killed and the 
 murderers still on French soil, she fights 
 bravely on, unmindful of her wounds, and 
 without any other idea as to the outcome of 
 this war except a victory for France and the 
 ending forever of the frightful Prussian 
 menace that has for years threatened her nat- 
 ional existence. She is determined to have 
 Alsace and Lorraine, for they were French. 
 Some well-meaning Americans have suggested 
 that a vote be taken among the population of 
 Alsace and Lorraine, to determine whether 
 they should be a part of France or Germany. 
 Such a test would be unfair. Throughout 
 France, I met men whose families had refused 
 to stay in either Alsace or Lorraine under Ger- 
 man rule, and who gave up their homes in 
 order to continue to live under the French 
 
172 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 flag. Germany has done everything possible 
 to drive away the French and to cause Ger- 
 mans to settle in their places. There is no 
 question how the real Alsace and Lorraine 
 population would vote, thousands of whom no 
 longer live in their old homes. Their desire is 
 to be French. The new population introduced 
 by Germany, of course, wishes to remain under 
 the government that has awarded them some 
 other man's land. The population of Alsace 
 and Lorraine might vote to be French, not- 
 withstanding all attempts to Germanize the 
 people, but the vote, to be a real test, should 
 include the exiles living in France. Many of 
 these exiles are serving in the French Army at 
 the risk of being instantly tried and shot as 
 traitors by the Germans, if captured. One 
 thing is sure: France intends to have back 
 Alsace and Lorraine, and is ready to fight for 
 them to the death. 
 
 It was a dark night after a heavy battle when 
 the first American troops began to approach 
 the front trenches. A friend of mine told me 
 that as he marched his men down a road on 
 their way to their positions in the front line, 
 they passed column after column of tired and 
 decimated French troops lined up by the way- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 173 
 
 side to let them pass. The column was so near 
 the German lines that no one spoke above a 
 whisper, and it was too dark to see more than 
 vague shapes as the American column passed. 
 But suddenly it became known to some of the 
 Frenchmen that it was an American regiment 
 going into the trenches, and the word passed 
 on down the long row <5f waiting figures. A 
 whisper, "The American Relief!", "the Amer- 
 icans!!", went from mouth to mouth like the 
 rustling of leaves when a wind sweeps 
 through a forest. And at that, without a 
 definite order, every Frenchman saluted and 
 stood at attention until the Americans had 
 passed. That is the spirit with which France 
 is receiving us, and that is the gratitude which 
 has put us on our honor to prove ourselves 
 worthy of so much friendliness and faith. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT GERMAN ATROCITIES 
 
 Most Americans do not appreciate the hor- 
 rors of this war. No longer is there any of the 
 sportsmanship that formerly existed in war- 
 fare. It is now merely a question of how to 
 kill as many of the enemy as possible. The 
 days at Petersburg, in Virginia, when the sol- 
 diers of the Northern Army in our Civil War, 
 exchanged coffee with their enemies for 
 Southern tobacco, do not exist in the present 
 war. That is not Germany's method of fight- 
 ing. Her soldiers are taught to hate and to 
 kill. 
 
 I confess, when I went abroad, that I 
 believed that the stories of German cruelties 
 were exaggerated. I though that perhaps a 
 few criminals brought into the army by uni- 
 versal conscription, had perpetrated crimes in 
 isolated instances which should not be laid to 
 the German armies as a whole. After my stay 
 on the British and French fronts, I believe the 
 terrible stories related to me, and what is more^ 
 
176 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 I believe that these cruelties are practiced 
 with the knowledge and with the encourage- 
 ment and frequently at the instigation of the 
 German commanding officers. One wonders 
 that human beings can be so bestial and cruel. 
 From every direction the evidence is accumu- 
 lating that the German excesses are part of a 
 great governmental plan to overawe their 
 adversaries by terrifying acts of cruelty. The 
 killing of the women and children of London 
 and other parts of England by aircraft, surely 
 is not the work of any unauthorized persons. 
 The shelling of life boats filled with women 
 and children and civilian passengers, the sub- 
 merging of a submarine with captives on its 
 deck from whom all life preservers have been 
 taken, all these cruelties must be done under 
 the orders of the officers commanding the sub- 
 marines. The burning of French and Belgian 
 towns accompanied by a systematic slaughter 
 of the inhabitants, must have been done 
 because of orders of German officers present. 
 On all sides the evidence piles up that the 
 awful cruelties are part of a huge precon- 
 ceived plan. 
 
 In the Somme, the Germans for some time 
 customarily shelled the churches on Sunday 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 177 
 
 morning, when they thought the people would 
 be at worship. Hospitals are a favorite object 
 of German attack by aircraft, which turn their 
 machine gun fire on the men and women 
 nurses with the patients they are in the act of 
 trying to save. A German aeroplane will fol- 
 low an ambulance and try to kill, with 
 machine gun fire, the occupants and the 
 driver. In the Somme, all captured inhabi- 
 tants were taken into slavery, and made to 
 work back of the German lines. Prisoners 
 were made to work under shell fire in the Ger- 
 man front trenches. In fact, the British cap- 
 tured Russians who had been taken prisoners 
 by the Germans on the East front, and were 
 being made to work under fire of the British 
 guns in the front line trenches on the West 
 front. 
 
 I was told by both British and French sol- 
 diers that the Germans killed the wounded 
 of their opponents and generally only take 
 prisoners, in the case of the British and 
 French, when a large number surrender at 
 once. If a small number of British and 
 French surrender, they are usually killed.. 
 Concerning the killing of wounded, Captain 
 Ward, who talked German as well as he did 
 
178 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 English, asked one of the many German pris- 
 oners he saw, how he liked being captured. 
 His answer was, "I am glad to be captured." 
 In answer to the question, "How were you 
 caught?", he answered: "The British will 
 spare you, if you act fast. I was near the 
 mouth of a dugout and when the British came, 
 I got my hands up fast and they let me out but 
 they threw in a bomb and killed all my com- 
 rades. But I do not blame them for killing us 
 when they can for we are instructed to kill all 
 their wounded," 
 
 It is a usual happening for a wounded Ger- 
 man not only to shoot passing British or 
 French soldiers, but also the person who has 
 just bound his wounds or given him water. 
 When the British make a charge, Germans 
 will raise their hands and cry "Kamerad," 
 and then shoot in their backs, the men who 
 have just passed and spared their lives. We 
 have all heard the story of the Canadian Scot- 
 tish. Several of the Canadian Scottish who 
 were captured by the Germans were fright- 
 fully mutilated and sent back to their own 
 lines. The Canadians were wild with rage, 
 and when they were permitted to charge, they 
 swept everything before them. As they cap- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 179 
 
 tured the German trench, they saw another of 
 their men, a sergeant, crucified with bayonets 
 through the palms of his hands, and still liv- 
 ing. I mentioned this to an American who 
 had served with the Canadians and had been 
 present when this happened, and he laughed, 
 a not pleasant laugh, "One crucified," said he, 
 "there have been dozens." It is said that the 
 Canadians die fighting, they never surrender. 
 A French captain told me that some of his 
 men were taken into a building where kero- 
 sene was poured upon them and they were 
 burned alive. A French officer told me that 
 a company of his regiment became separated 
 from the others and was captured by the Ger- 
 mans. Some time later the French found the 
 bodies of these men in a trench, each with the 
 head cut off and placed on the body, and inde- 
 scribable indecendies practiced. There were 
 no other marks on the bodies, showing that 
 they had not been killed fighting. Their 
 throats had been cut after they had been taken 
 prisoners. 
 
 A French officer told me how he and sev- 
 eral of his men were taken prisoners by the 
 Germans during the first of the gas attacks, 
 when the gas was not as strong as it is now. 
 
180 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 He became insensible and awoke next day a 
 prisoner with seven of his companions, while 
 a German surgeon was working over him. 
 While he was lying in that position, German 
 soldiers came in and began killing his com- 
 panions. He said one French boy, nineteen 
 years of age, begged the soldier, whose rifle 
 was pointed at his forehead, not to kill him for 
 the sake of his mother. The officer told me 
 that he turned his head away when the shot 
 was fired. He added that all his companions 
 were killed, but he was spared, perhaps, 
 because he was an officer, and perhaps because 
 a German surgeon was working over him at 
 the time. This surgeon was an officer, and yet 
 he made no attempt to stop his men from kill- 
 ing the prisoners. As the French officer said 
 in his description to me, "These men were not 
 killed fighting or when they tried to sur- 
 render on the battlefield, they were murdered 
 the day after they had been disarmed and their 
 surrender accepted." 
 
 One hardly wonders that certain of the regi- 
 ments of the allies that have suffered, refuse 
 to take prisoners. This is not as bad as it 
 seems, for they let their adversaries die fight- 
 ing and with a chance of killing them or they 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 181 
 
 pass prisoners along to a regiment that does 
 take prisoners, so that their boast will be kept 
 true. 
 
 The cruelty of the Germans has brought 
 forth repayment in kind. An American, in 
 the Canadians, who had been several times 
 fired at by wounded Germans whom he had 
 forborn killing, told me that he knew how to 
 keep a wounded German quiet. I asked him 
 what was his method. His answer was, *^I 
 just put a bomb under him and then he will 
 keep quiet enough." I asked about the ambu- 
 lance men, ^'Don^t they get blown up by that 
 same bomb when they try to move the wounded 
 man?" "Oh, no!" he answered, "the ambu- 
 lance men have four seconds to get out of the 
 way." 
 
 A French officer told me a case of retalia- 
 tion by a French soldier who had seen the 
 bodies of several of his friends who had been 
 wounded and killed and then mutilated. A 
 wounded German called for water. The 
 Frenchman, crazed by what he had seen, 
 seized the wounded German and hurled him in 
 a shell hole half full of water and drowned 
 him, yelling at the same time, "Yes, I will give 
 you all the water you wish." 
 
182 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 Many Americans have said that they have 
 lived in Germany, and that they cannot believe 
 that the Germans are as cruel as pictured. The 
 ordinary German that they have met and 
 learned to like as a friend, does not seem to be 
 a heartless murderer. I, too, have lived in 
 Germany, and I have liked many Germans 
 and have admired the efficiency of the German 
 nation. But these facts do not cause me to close 
 my eyes to Germany's faults. The reason 
 why the German soldiers are cruel arises from 
 the point of view of their rulers and from their 
 form of government. If Germany had con- 
 quered the world, the men of this class would 
 have been the supreme rulers everywhere. 
 The remainder of the German population is 
 controlled both by an iron discipline and by 
 deceit. The remainder of the German popu- 
 lation is what is meant by the commonly used 
 term, '^the German people." The German 
 people were told by their rulers, when the 
 German armies first moved, that the French 
 and Russians had already invaded Germany, 
 and that the British were in Belgium. Diaries 
 of soldiers show that the ones invading Bel- 
 gium, were stung to fury by their officers who 
 told them that the Belgian inhabitants were 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 183 
 
 poisoning the wells and murdering their com- 
 rades in other barbarous ways. There is no 
 question but that these stories, with the excep- 
 tion of some firing by civilians, which could 
 be easily controlled, were entirely invented by 
 the German officers to enrage their men with 
 intent to cause them to commit excesses. 
 Diaries of soldiers show that it was the officers 
 who ordered their men to kill the enemy 
 wounded and prisoners. In the heat of battle, 
 it is very easy for soldiers to obey such com- 
 mands. Atrocities provoked some retaliation, 
 and this made it yet easier for the German sol- 
 diers to continue as they began. 
 
 The frightfulness begins with the German 
 Emperor, who commanded his soldiers going 
 to China, to spare no one, to kill all prisoners, 
 to emulate Atilla the Hun, to create such ter- 
 ror in China that a Chinaman would fear for 
 years to come to look askance at a German. 
 From his own words, his soldiers are now 
 called "Huns" by the British. His Kingdom 
 of Prussia has grown great by the robbery and 
 forcible annexation of the territory of his 
 neighbors. His throne and power are based 
 on bloody wars. 
 
 The only limit of German barbarity is set 
 
184 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 by a fear of retaliation by her enemies. 
 Recently, I was asked why Germany had not 
 tried to spread disease germs, which would 
 cause epidemics among her enemies. My 
 answer was that Germany had tried spreading 
 disease germs in Roumania, and would do the 
 same thing on the West front, were it possible 
 to do so, and provided that she did not fear 
 retaliation. 
 
 Germany has reduced cruelty to a science 
 and her method of reasoning is much as fol- 
 lows : War is legalized murder or the killing 
 of as many of your adversaries in a short time 
 as possible; any means to bring about the 
 winning of the war are justified in warfare; 
 wounded enemy soldiers should be killed 
 because you are exhausting their man power 
 without having to guard or feed anyone ; your 
 own wounded men should continue fighting 
 for they then continue to be of value; for a 
 wounded man to await his opportunity and 
 then kill the man who has perhaps bound his 
 wounds, is all right, for he is continuing to ful- 
 fill the purpose of his being in the army, 
 namely, killing the enemy and to accomplish 
 that end he may use any necessary artifice ; the 
 inhabitants may be taken into slavery for their 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 185 
 
 labor is needed in factories and on fortifica- 
 tions ; anything is justified, according to Ger- 
 man opinion, which will win the war for 
 Germany. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSE 
 
 It is difficult for a Frenchman to under- 
 stand the melting pot of America. It is some- 
 thing new in the history of the migration of 
 races. To go and live in France and to take 
 out French citizenship papers does not make 
 a Frenchman any more than residence in 
 China would make him a Chinaman; and it 
 is almost impossible for the French to under- 
 stand that living in America does actually 
 change the individual into an American. Just 
 what quality in our civilization makes this 
 possible, we ourselves, do not understand. 
 
 In France, all men of German birth or 
 descent, departed and joined the German 
 Army or remained as spies in France. There 
 were sons of many mixed marriages between 
 French and German persons who entered the 
 French Army. I was told that everyone of 
 these men turned out to be a traitor to France. 
 The prejudice is so great that the French 
 
188 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 believe that no one of German origin can be 
 trusted. 
 
 In Great Britain, the situation is much the 
 same. Many Germans resided in England, 
 and later, they furnished the guides for many 
 of the early Zeppelin raids. Others remained 
 as spies. Many others claimed to be loyal and 
 undoubtedly were loyal. So many of them, 
 however, were not loyal, that the good suf- 
 fered with the bad and Britain would trust 
 none of them. The country is over-run with 
 spies, and the authorities intend to root them 
 out no matter who suflfers. 
 
 Even Americans who have served in the 
 British or French Armies question the use of 
 men of recent German origin. An American 
 with the Canadians told me that in his regi- 
 ment there was one man whose father was 
 German and his mother English. He claimed 
 to be very bitter against the Germans. One 
 day, from the trenches, a wounded British 
 officer was seen in "No Man's Land" and this 
 man volunteered to go and rescue him. He 
 crawled from the British trenches towards the 
 wounded man, passed him and kept right on 
 into the German lines. Thereafter the Ger- 
 man guns were given the exact range of where 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 189 
 
 his old companions were stationed and, as a 
 result, a Major of the regiment with a couple 
 of staff officers were killed besides a large 
 number of other soldiers. 
 
 The experiences of France and Great 
 Britain are due to many reasons. The coun- 
 tries are not a long distance from Germany 
 and it is not difficult for their German resi- 
 dents to maintain contact with their old home. 
 Being so close, both have many German 
 visitors or temporary residents who do not 
 intend to give up their German citizenship or 
 to reside permanently away from Germany. 
 These temporary residents keep the permanent 
 residents in constant touch with Germany. In 
 addition, neither France nor Great Britain 
 expect a German to become naturalized. The 
 European countries try to hold a citizen to his 
 allegiance in no matter what other country he 
 may be living. All of the European countries 
 have disliked the actions of the United States 
 in naturalizing their subjects. 
 
 In the United States the situation is very 
 different. America is so far away from 
 Germany that most German settlers go there 
 intending to remain permanently. Instead of 
 expecting these settlers to preserve any senti- 
 
190 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 ment for the land of their birth, the United 
 States has naturalized them and has at once 
 demanded their full allegiance even as against 
 the land in which they were born. In the 
 United States a divided allegiance is not 
 recognized. 
 
 This attitude has led to some misunder- 
 standing. The French seriously believed, as 
 late as 1915, that if we were to go to war with 
 Germany we should have on our hands a dis- 
 loyal element as large as our German popula- 
 tion, and it is a constant source of wonder to 
 both the British and the French that so many 
 of our army in France are the children and 
 grandchildren of German parents. They 
 would not wonder if they knew more about 
 our history. The first large influx of Germans 
 was in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 prior to our revolution. The descendants of 
 these men are the same as any other real 
 Americans and the only thing German about 
 them is perhaps their family name. Germans 
 came to this country in large numbers prior 
 to and following the German unrest in the 
 forties. These men and the ones who followed 
 them, furnished many soldiers in the Northern 
 armies in the Civil War and saved at least one 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 191 
 
 State to the Union. There is no question 
 about the loyalty of the descendants of these 
 men for their ancestors came to the United 
 States because of sympathy for an unsuccess- 
 ful revolt against the very things that the 
 United States is fighting against now. Prac- 
 tically no men such as these settled in France 
 or Great Britain. 
 
 Some years ago, I lived for about two years 
 in a city in Prussia. Placards were posted 
 urging the people to settle in America and 
 setting forth how much higher wages could be 
 earned there. The placards contained the 
 following significant statement of which I give 
 a free translation, "You can be just as much a 
 German in America as in Germany." The 
 United States is a unit in believing that any 
 former German who tries to carry out that 
 doctrine is no American; he is an enemy. 
 Then there is another kind of German: the 
 one who has come over to blow up our muni- 
 tion works, to start strikes, to encourage sab- 
 botage among workers, to influence us through 
 our press to our damage, to get us into war 
 with Mexico, to encourage a hatred for Japan, 
 to stir up South America against us, to do 
 anything and everything that will hurt us and 
 
192 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 help Germany. There is a quick way of 
 handling such persons used by France which 
 our Government may be forced to employ. 
 
 The United States holds a high standard for 
 her citizens of foreign extraction to follow. 
 Any German-American who says that he 
 would defend this country were it attacked, 
 but will not take any part in the war in 
 Europe, is set down as offering a paltry excuse 
 to this, his country. Our history has taught us 
 that members of many of the older American 
 families had ancestors who were Englishmen 
 and who fought the land of their birth and 
 won the independence of this country.^ The 
 descendants of these men consider that it is 
 not too much to ask a man of German birth 
 to preserve that independence from attack by 
 Germany. 
 
 I once met a French officer who had no 
 French blood in him at all. His father and 
 mother were both English and had been 
 brought to France when children, and he had 
 been born and reared in France. He consid- 
 ered himself thoroughly French. One day we 
 were talking about what his attitude would be 
 in the event that war should sometime arise 
 between France and Great Britain. He ques- 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 193 
 
 tioned whether he would fight against Great 
 Britain under such circumstances and he mar- 
 veled when I told him that Americans of 
 German birth were supposed to be as ready to 
 fight Germany as any other American. 
 
 Only persons who have been to the United 
 States can understand our point of view. A 
 young Scotch officer told me the following: 
 "I visited America about five years ago. I 
 stayed with an uncle in Pennsylvania. He 
 and his wife were Scotch. Say, but I admire 
 the sentiment you teach in your schools. My 
 young cousin got talking to me about America. 
 I referred to him as being Scotch and he got 
 quite angry. He said he was an American 
 and there was nothing Scotch about him. He 
 said it made no difference from where one's 
 ancestors came, if one became an American 
 he was as much of an American as any of the 
 oldest settlers. Why that boy was really 
 Scotch on both sides and he actually talked 
 like that and believed what he said. I admire 
 your schools because they are teaching that a 
 boy must be an American and that he cannot 
 be something else at the same time, and your 
 boys believe what they are being taught." 
 
 I think that the young Scotch lieutenant 
 
194 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 correctly set forth the American point of view. 
 Nearly every regiment going to France has 
 men on its rolls whose names show their Ger- 
 man ancestry. Let not the loyal man of 
 German extraction suffer for the sins of the 
 disloyal, but when the latter is caught let him 
 suffer quick and severe punishment as an 
 example to all spies and traitors. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 WE HAVE COME 
 
 When the French officers who had been 
 assigned to instruct the army of the United 
 States in France first inspected the regulars, 
 they expected to find seasoned troops who were 
 well trained and organized according to mod- 
 ern theories. They found, instead, regiments 
 largely composed of recruits and lacking 
 a large part of the training and equipment 
 required for modern warfare. 
 
 After our army arrived in France, the num- 
 ber of men in the companies was changed, as 
 well as the number in the regiments, brigades, 
 divisions and corps. Many supply and auxil- 
 iary units had to be formed. There was no 
 provision for grenadiers, bombardiers or other 
 like positions necessary for modern infantry 
 fighting. 
 
 They did not have any conception of how 
 to meet or how to use gas or liquid fire. Their 
 method of fighting with the bayonet was at 
 once abandoned for the British system. They 
 
196 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 were ignorant of trench warfare as practiced 
 abroad. To send such troops into battle would 
 have been to send them to destruction. The 
 only thing was done that could be done. All 
 through Eastern France, towns were given 
 over to the American soldiers and there they 
 began to learn the modern way of making war. 
 
 I have only mentioned a few of the troubles 
 of the army when it first arrived in France. 
 The persons in control of the government in 
 Germany, openly stated to their people that 
 it would make no difference to them in the 
 war whether the United States came into it 
 or not, that in military effectiveness the United 
 States was about equal to Roumania. They 
 stated that it was rather an advantage to have 
 the United States among Germany's enemies, 
 because it was powerless to fight, but could 
 pay Germany's bills after it had been con- 
 quered. Now all this is changed. 
 
 The personnel of the American Army has 
 saved the situation. The men of our splendid 
 forces are like those of the troops of the best 
 foreign regiments. Officers and men are intel- 
 ligent, willing and most enthusiastic. Their 
 record has shown that they will equal or sur- 
 pass any of the other armies, for in spite of 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 197 
 
 their handicaps, they started with many 
 advantages not possessed by the others. Not 
 only have most of the Americans a fair edu- 
 cation, but they have within their number 
 many highly trained technical men. The qual- 
 ity of the officers obtained from the training 
 camps has been of the best. The conscripts 
 have surpassed everyone's expectations and 
 are gloriously vindicating our hopes for them. 
 
 The American Army has the additional 
 advantage of being able to learn the science of 
 warfare without the necessity of undergoing 
 the costly mistakes of its allies. Both France 
 and Great Britain have sent large numbers 
 of their best officers to the army in France to 
 act as instructors. Realizing that it knew 
 nothing of modern war-making, the American 
 Army in France began its military education 
 by first learning elementary principles before 
 trying to learn the more complex ones. Slowly 
 but surely, General Pershing is turning his 
 men into trained soldiers. 
 
 The American soldiers have another advan- 
 tage in that their moral conditions are of the 
 highest. The officers and men of the Ameri- 
 can Army are worked very hard, get few 
 leaves of absence, and practically never get a 
 
198 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 chance to go to a large city like Paris. The 
 painted women of Paris by censor get few op- 
 portunities to get at the Americans. The 
 greatest encouragement to irnmorality was the 
 excessive pay given to the American enlisted 
 soldier in France. The French private sol- 
 dier received five cents a day while the Ameri- 
 can private soldier was paid thirty dollars 
 a month or approximately one dollar a 
 day. It was practically impossible for a soldier 
 to spend legitimately the French equivalent of 
 thirty dollars or one hundred and fifty francs 
 a month, and General Pershing sent to the 
 United States a request that his men be not 
 given so much money. As a result of his com- 
 plaint, a soldier is now made to save a part of 
 his pay, or if he has a wife or family, a part 
 is paid to her or to them for her or their 
 support. 
 
 The foreign armies marvel at the abste- 
 miousness of the Americans. Wine is issued 
 to the French soldiers as part of their ration. 
 The British soldiers are issued rum. Our 
 soldiers are encouraged not to drink at all. 
 The soldiers of the other nations do not admire 
 the non-drinking of the American soldiers; 
 they rather look upon their point of view as 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 199 
 
 something queer in a person who otherwise 
 is very sensible. 
 
 I told many French and British soldiers 
 about the sixth division of the National Guard 
 with which I was stationed on the Mexican 
 border during the summer and early fall of 
 1916. I told an English Lieutenant-Colonel 
 that during its tour of duty on the border, the 
 commander of this division had prevented 
 all its men from drinking and with the 
 co-operation of the civil authorities had closed 
 up all the vice resorts, and as a result his men 
 were morally good in every way. His com- 
 ment was "Poor fellows!" 
 
 The discipline maintained by General 
 Pershing is very strict. He believes in watch- 
 ing for and correcting small defects, and he 
 does not hesitate to set right any person no 
 matter who he may be. The officers and men 
 are afraid of him, and with good cause. The 
 General has decreed that no married officer 
 may have his wife in France. No soldier will 
 be permitted to return to the United States 
 unless on duty, or unless his term of active 
 service is at an end. Every officer going to 
 France does so for the duration of the war.. 
 The officers and men of the American army 
 
200 WAR TIME FRANCE 
 
 are worked hard, but they are cheerful and 
 are looking forward to their turn at the front. 
 Foreign officers marvel at their aptitude and 
 good nature in their work. In the American 
 army camps in France the seriousness of the 
 war is fully appreciated and the success of 
 our troops in battle shows the result of their 
 careful training. 
 
 But we must not relax for an instant our 
 efforts at home. We are going to win the 
 war, because we are doing the one thing neces- 
 sary to win it. We are sending abroad over- 
 whelming numbers of troops and supplies. 
 Our troops, young and fresh, are more than 
 a match for the Germans, man for man. 
 What we have to fear is the German organi- 
 zation. If we will put into the field, as we 
 easily can, twice as many troops as are opposite 
 to us on the western front the victory will be 
 won with comparatively small loss of life. 
 When the Germany army does break it will 
 go all to pieces. Practically ever German 
 who can carry a gun is on the west front 
 while women and prisoners do the work at 
 home. The British Army cannot supply 
 surplus troops. Their armies are scattered 
 throughout the globe. We alone can furnish 
 
WAR TIME FRANCE 201 
 
 troops until we out-number the Germans two 
 or three to one. When that happens, Germany 
 will collapse and there will be no further 
 question of dealing with the Kaiser. The 
 fighting on our front has shown that our men 
 are anxious and eager to get into the fight, 
 whereas the armies of all the other belligerents 
 are tired of the war, the Germans no less than 
 the French and the British. But we are 
 fresh, we are young and we will win the war. 
 
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