Life is a curious thing. In time of war Life is itself the extraordinary and Death seems the only ordinary thing possible for men. In time of war man is but a straw thrown into the wide ocean. If the tossing waves do not engulf him he can do no more than float on the surface. God alone knows his destiny. This book, Under the German Shells , is another instance of war’s uncertainties. Sent by my government to America to join the new American army as instructor, I wrote the greater part of the boo

ONLY those who were actors in the great drama of the mobilization of July, 1914, in France, can at this time appreciate clearly all its phases. No picture, however skilful the hand which traces it, can give in full its tragic grandeur and its impassioned beauty. Every man who lived through this momentous hour of history regarded its development from a point of view peculiar to himself. According to his situation and environment he experienced sensations which no other could entirely share. Later

A SHORT time before the advent of the world catastrophe, Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, was in France. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris. He gave me the first copy, in French and English, of the report of the American commission of inquiry concerning the Balkan atrocities. This report was made for the Carnegie Foundation, and he asked me to spread the knowledge of it, as far as possible, in my own country. I believed then that I was doing well in drawing f

AS the result of tenacity and strenuous effort, our work of defense progressed. We had been able to build a smooth, sloping bank all around the fort, to place entanglements before the principal entrance, and to arrange such cannon as we had at our disposal. We put iron-bars in front of the windows to break the impact of shells, and baskets filled with sand at passage entrances. We had sufficient provision to last a month. We built a country oven that we might bake bread and not be reduced by fam

WE took with us on our retreat some prisoners captured at Guise, during our frenzied flight; some dozen men, whom the gendarmes conducted, handcuffs on wrists. They excited much curiosity. These soldiers did not give a very proud idea of the battle, nor of the enemy army. They were poor devils, dressed in gray, whose boots of tan leather alone drew attention. These looked very well, but were too narrow for the feet, and several men limped in a ridiculous manner. Chained with them marched some ci

IT is night. It is raining. The train stops at a station. We have arrived. But where? No one knows. All is black. All is sombre. All is sinister. All is threatening. We alight from the carriages to stretch our legs. “Silence!” growl the officers. “In two ranks, quick!” Along the platform we fall in line as well as possible in the dark, our knapsacks on our backs, and, over all, the rain. “Forward.” We reach a road; a road that feels hard under the feet. A damp chill arises from the invisible ear

THE severe winter ran its course. We had worked incessantly. We had a whole sector to ourselves. First, there was the tangled network of barbed-wire, a piece of work in which we all had a share. Each evening, as night fell, a company of men went out on No Man’s Land to work in the thick, treacherous darkness. One gang dug holes and put in the posts, another stretched the parallel wires, another attached the transverse wires. As this required great blows of a mallet, it made considerable noise, w

WHEN the life fantastic becomes the life ordinary, when one is at the centre of prodigious events which unroll more rapidly than the picture on the screen, and appear in ever-new guise, the astonishing thing becomes a natural thing; the unheard-of becomes the expected. A distortion of sensation is produced; the brain registers only that which surpasses the climax of what has already been experienced; as on mountain heights, peaks which have been surmounted appear low, and the climber feels that

EXISTENCE in the trenches is characterized by a monotony that soon becomes a burden. It is made up of waiting and work: work in which a man is by turns dirt-digger, sentinel, carpenter, and porter. There is much time for rest and repose. It is a special type of life, which recalls that of the sieges of olden days, when armies sat long months at a time facing each other. One does not fight all the time. The vigil is constant, but the struggle is not. There is the incessant watching of the field i

A YEAR had passed. The Marne and the Yser had gone into history. We knew that enormous preparations were in progress behind our lines. They are always known. The symptoms are perfectly visible. The artillery is massed, the various operations are pushed more vigorously, new precautions are taken. Vague rumors are afloat. Every one wishes to appear informed, and the strangest forecasts, the most absurd reports are passed from mouth to mouth, originating no one knows where. “We are going clear to t

THOSE who have not been actively engaged in the war cannot form any conception of it. When they hear a combatant speak of it, they say: “Then you fight all the time?” “No.” Whereupon they think: “Then in the firing-line one is not really in much danger.” Ah, not so fast, good people! In this war, this new, present-day war, the vigilance is continuous, the hand-to-hand struggle is not. Shells fall unceasingly, but the open battle, the assault, is not without interruption. Fortunately. Thus it was

I   HAVE no intention, in writing this work, to describe the entire war. It would be an impossible task, and I do not suppose that any author who is a contemporary of the immense tragedy would have the presumption to attempt it. To undertake such a task with success, it would be necessary to wait until many years had effaced the secondary details, leaving in the foreground only the principal facts. Then, too, each person sees the war in his own way, from his own point of view, and can relate nei