BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER 1914 From the Swedish of Anton Nystrom and with an introduction by Edmund Gosse , C.B., LL.D. 6s net. EUROPE'S DEBT TO RUSSIA By Dr. Charles Sarolea . Cr. 8vo, 3s 6d net. AMONG THE RUINS A Volume of Personal Experiences. By Gomez Carrillo . Cr. 8vo, 3s 6d net. VIVE LA FRANCE By E. Alexander Powell , Author of "Fighting in Flanders." Cr. 8vo, Illustrated, 3s 6d net. GERMANY'S VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS OF WAR Published under the auspices of the French Government. Translated

Praise, they say, is stricken dumb by the greatest names, and also, we may add, by the greatest deeds. It is only by the bare simplicity of faithful narrative that we can hope not to belittle these. But yesterday the public had no knowledge of the great, heroic things accomplished by the Brigade of Marines ( Fusiliers Marins ). They were hidden under a confused mass of notes, communiqués , instructions and plans of operations, private letters, and newspaper articles. It has been no easy task to

The sources drawn upon in the following narrative are of various kinds: official communiqués , French and foreign reports, etc. But the majority of our information was derived from private letters, collected by M. de Thézac, the modest and zealous founder of the Abris du Marin (Seamen's Shelters), from note-books kindly lent by their owners, and from oral inquiries addressed to the survivors of Melle and Dixmude. Whenever possible, we have let our correspondents speak for themselves. We regret t

On the morning of October 8 two troop trains passed each other in the station of Thourout. One contained Belgian Carabiniers; the other, French Marines. They exchanged greetings from their respective lines. The Carabiniers waved their little yellow-bound caps and cried: "Long live France!" The sailors replied by hurrahs in honour of Belgium. "Where are you going?" asked a Belgian officer. "To Antwerp. And you?" "To France." He explained that the Carabiniers were recruits from La Campine, who wer

The little lace-making town, the younger sister of Mechlin and Bruges, had not suffered as much as we had feared. The rattle of the bobbins was no longer to be heard on the doorsteps; certain houses showed the stigmata of preliminary martyrdom in their empty window-frames and blackened façades. But her heart beat still, and around her, in the great open conservatory which forms the outskirts of Ghent, Autumn had gathered all her floral splendours. "We marched through fields of magnificent begoni

How was the retirement to be carried out? The operation seemed to be a very delicate one. The enemy was watching us on every side. General Capper's orders were to disengage ourselves by a night march to Aeltre, where the roads to Bruges and Thielt intersect. The retreat began very accurately and methodically, facilitated by the precautionary arrangements the Admiral had made: first, our convoys; then, half an hour later, our troops, which were replaced temporarily in their positions by the Engli

Our columns started at 4 a.m., while it was still quite dark, but the roads were good in spite of the rain which had been falling incessantly all night. The route was through Warken, Zarren, and Eessen, with Dixmude as its final point. The first battalion of the 2nd Regiment and the three Belgian batteries of the Pontus group brought up the rear. The advance was hampered by the usual congestion of the roads, refugees fleeing before the invaders, dragging bundles containing all their worldly good

On October 16, 1914, Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuiden) numbered about 4,000 inhabitants. The Guides call it "a pretty little town," but it was scarcely more than a large village. "It is a kind of Pont-Labbé," wrote one of our sailors, but a Flemish Pont-Labbé, all bricks and tiles, dotted with cafés and nunneries, clean, mystical, sensuous, and charming, especially when the rain ceased for a while, and the old houses, coloured bright green or yellow, smiled at the waters of the canal behind their

Save for an unimportant suburb beyond the Handzaeme Canal, Dixmude lies entirely on the right bank of the Yser. Nevertheless, our general line of defence on October 16, both up and down stream, went beyond the line traced by the course of the river. From Saint-Jacques-Cappelle to the North Sea, by way of Beerst, Keyem, Leke, Saint-Pierre, etc., little rural settlements but yesterday unknown, drowsing in the gentle Flemish calm, the arc of the circle it described followed, almost throughout its c

The Belgian Headquarters Staff had probably decided that its front on the Ostend road was too excentric, and that the line of the Yser would form a more solid epaulement. And in this case our diversion on Beerst was not quite useless, since it had secured the orderly retreat of the Belgian troops; but, on the other hand, as a result of this diversion and of the reinforcement of the German troops, De Mitry had been unable to maintain himself at Thourout; the Turcos had returned to Loo, and the re

A new actor was about to appear on the scene, a new ally, slower, but infinitely more effectual, than the best reinforcements. Last November the Moniteur Belge published a royal decree conferring the Order of Leopold upon M. Charles Louis Kogge, garde wateringue of the north of Furnes, for his courageous and devoted services in the work of inundation in the Yser region. It was, we have been told, this M. Kogge who first conceived the idea of calling the waters to our aid. A more romantic version

On October 25 we had not yet received any help from the inundation. Our troops were in dire need of rest, and the enemy was tightening his grip along the entire front. New reinforcements were coming up to fill the gaps in his ranks; our scouts warned us that fresh troops were marching upon Dixmude by the three roads of Eessen, Beerst, and Woumen. [46] We had to expect a big affair the next day, if not that very night. It came off that night. About 7 o'clock the Gamas company went to relieve the

Thus ended this dramatic episode, of which neither the genesis nor the results have been fully elucidated so far. Did the German troop which overran the town during the night, and of which only a portion got away to the meadows with the prisoners, consist of a battalion or a half-battalion? The fire of Captain Marcotte de Sainte-Marie's guns had laid a good many of the enemy low. "We were walking over their corpses in the street," wrote Marine H. G. [51] The next day we turned a fair number of t

All Saints' Day was nearly as quiet as the preceding forty-eight hours. We re-established our trenches, and the Admiral reorganised his regiments and transferred his headquarters to Oudecappelle. In his journal Alfred de Nanteuil, who had been with our second line from the day before, notices the truce from marmites , if not from shrapnel and bullets, "singing past a little like summer flies." But farms were blazing all round the vast horizon, lighting up the November night and accentuating the

She is not quite dead yet, however. Scalped, shattered, and burnt as she is, she still holds a spark of life as long as we are there. This charnel-house in which we are encamped, with its streets, which are nothing but malodorous paths winding among corpses, heaps of broken stone and brick, and craters opened by the Boche marmites , still beats with life in its depths. Existence has become subterranean. Dixmude has catacombs into which our men pour when they leave the trenches. And they are not