Part 3

"We decorated the wards and halls with holly and mistletoe, which grows in great abundance and richness here in France. We had the tree all lighted by electric bulbs downstairs, with a beautiful Santa Claus giving out gifts. All walking cases filed in and received small gifts. Many came in chairs, too. Meantime a trained chorus was walking through the halls from floor to floor, singing Christmas carols, and finally Santa Claus carried his gifts to all the bed patients. In the meanwhile the chapel was filled with soldiers and nurses, and many patriotic songs were sung. The singing made me so homesick that the tears came and I had to go back to my sick men. I bought each man a package of cigarettes and a box of matches, and I gave an enlargement of the group photo I sent you to each man in it. Also I lent them my big silk American flag to help decorate.

_The Clown of the Hospital._

"Ahmed, the big Turco, who came to me with seven shrapnel wounds, but is now almost well, and who I told you is the proud husband of two wives and the father of six sons--he does not count the daughters--got hold of the flag somehow, and now it hangs proudly over his bed. By the way, he heard this morning that one of his wives, Fatima, has presented him with a son, so now he has seven. Such joy! While I was down at noon buying the tobacco and a few little things for K---- I saw a little doll, chocolate in color, dressed as a baby. I bought it and put it on Ahmed's pillow when he wasn't looking. The instant he spied it he let off a yell: 'Mon fils de Tunis!' and hugged that poupée and carried on most delightfully.

"I also bought a wooden crane, whose head, neck, and feet move, for Moosa, the black Senegalesi. I told you about him a long time ago, but not by name. He is the one who said a prayer over his wound and tried to bite every one who came near him. He has become quite tame under the influence of Dr. Chauneau, who is the most charming old Frenchman imaginable. Moosa got toys exactly like a child and was just as delighted. He laughs just like a typical Southern darky does, and is altogether funny. They keep him in a red jacket and cap, and the color effect is splendid. It reminds me of chocolate and strawberry ice cream.

* * * * *

"That Turco, Ahmed, whom I've spoken of several times, and who is absolutely devoted to me, keeps the ward in a perfect gale. Last night the men had a regular circus there, and it was all fomented by that old rascal. I've told you how he insists on calling me 'maman' and is jealous as a spoiled child if I show any extra attention to any of the other patients in the ward. Well, last night old Ahmed was very much excited when I came in after supper. He has learned some English, which he now mixes with his French and Arabic. When I asked him what was the trouble he said: 'Spik, maman?' meaning might he talk. I graciously gave him permission, whereupon he burst into burning speech.

"He said they were all French, both Arabs and Frenchmen, and the English were their allies, weren't they? Yes. They were all wounded? Yes. All in the same cause? Yes. Some had more than one wound; he had seven? Yes. Then why weren't they all fed alike? Why should Risbourg sit in bed, never walking, never going to the table to eat--in fact, never doing any of the things they all had to do--and yet have extra feeding? You see, Risbourg is the case I told you of that nearly died of hemorrhage from a small arm wound. He had to be transfused and he is on extra feeding to make up his blood. He does eat enormously, and I love to see him do it.

"Well, I noticed that Risbourg was the only one who wasn't laughing, so I called Ahmed to attention and told him the story of the hemorrhage, whereupon he gave me a huge wink to show that it was all a joke. Risbourg didn't regard it as such, so I went over and told him that I understood, and that I wanted him to eat as much as he wanted, and that it was all right. He is really very devoted to me, and said: 'You, doctor, you understand, but all the time Ahmed tells the nurse to tell you that I eat too much.'

"By this time they were all crowding around him trying to make up, and he added: 'I know why they say such things! It is because I am of the infantry of France, and they are zouaves and tirailleurs (artillerymen) of Africa. I am alone among them.'

"Well, this was getting serious, so I made a speech and told them they were all Frenchmen and brothers, and we all 'vived la France!' Then Old Incorrigible had to pipe up again: 'Mais, maman, Risbourg said I didn't smell good. And he spat when I said I was a Frenchman. And also he said he was a German.'

"I said: 'Risbourg, did you tell him you were a German?' Risbourg smiled broadly (he has one tooth gone just like Dave Warfield) and said: 'Yes, doctor, but because the Irish boy told me to. Je fais une plaisance.' So then I pointed out to him that he had had his little joke, and Ahmed had had his, when he said that he ate too much. Great applause from the Arabs, who quickly got the ethical point. So we all made up and shook hands."

ROYALTY AT THE FRONT.

The following letter, written by Prince Joachim of Prussia, the youngest son of the German Emperor, was addressed to a wounded comrade in arms by the Prince, himself at that time recovering from a wound suffered in battle. Prince Joachim, who is 24 years old, is a Lieutenant in the First Prussian Infantry Guards. In a tone of easy-going comradeship, not usually associated with the stern and imperious Hohenzollerns, the young Prince wrote to his friend and fellow-guardsman, Sergt. Karl Kummer, who had been sent, badly wounded, to the home of his sister at Teplitz:

My dear Kummer: How sincerely I rejoiced to receive your very solicitous letter! I was sure of Kummer for that; that no one could hold him back when the time came to do some thrashing! God grant that you may speedily recover, so that you can enter Potsdam, crowned with glory, admired, and envied. Who is nursing you?

The old proud First Guard Regiment has proved that it was ready to conquer and to die. Kummer, if I can in any way help you, I shall gladly do so, by providing anything that will make you comfortable. You know how happy I have always been for your devotion to the service, and how we two always were for action (Schwung). I, too, am proud to have been wounded for our beloved Fatherland, and I regret only that I am not permitted to be with the regiment. Well, may God take care of you! Your devoted

JOACHIM OF PRUSSIA.

* * * * *

Interesting, too, is a letter written on Sept. 5 by Ernest II., Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, who, besides being a Lieutenant of the Prussian Guard and Chief of the Eighth Infantry Regiment of Thuringia, is Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (since 1908), of Juliers, Cleves and Berg, Engern, and Westphalia; Landgrave in Thuringia, Margrave of Misnia, Count of Henneberg, Marche, Ravensberg, and Seigneur of Ravenstein and Tonna. In 1898 the Duke married Princess Adelaide of Schaumburg-Lippe, thus uniting two great German houses. His own house was started in 1655 by Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen. His letter follows:

We have lived through a great deal and done a great deal, marching, marching, continually, without rest or respite. On Aug. 10 we reached Willdorf, near Jülich, by train, and from the 12th of August we marched without a single day of rest except Aug. 16, which we spent in a Belgian village near Liége, until to-day, when we reached ----. These have been army marches such as history has never known.

The weather was fine, except that a broiling heat blazed down upon us. The regiment can point back to several days' marches of fifty kilometers ----. Everywhere our arrival created great amazement, in Louvain as well as in Brussels, into which the entire ---- marched at one time. At first we were taken for Englishmen in almost every village, and we still are, because the inhabitants cannot realize that we have arrived so early. The Belgians, moreover, in the last few days almost invariably set fire to their own villages.

On Aug. 24 we first entered battle; I led a combined brigade consisting of ----. The regiment fought splendidly, and in spite of the gigantic strain put upon it, it is still in the best of spirits and full of the joy of battle. On that day I was for a long time in the sharpest rifle and artillery fire. Since that time there have been almost daily skirmishes and continual long marches; the enemy stalks ahead of us in seven-league boots.

On Aug. 26 we put behind us a march of exactly twenty-three hours, from 6:30 o'clock in the morning until 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew into the air.

After resting for three hours in a field of stubble, and after we had all eaten in common with the men in a field kitchen--as we usually do--we continued marching till dark.

The spirit among our men is excellent. To-night I am to have a real bed--the fourth, I believe, since the war began. To-day I undressed for the first time in eight days.

* * * * *

The battle of Lyck, the victory of which has heretofore been attributed solely to Field Marshal von Hindenburg, would appear to have been won by his subordinate, Gen. Curt E. von Morgen, according to the following letter, written by Gen. von Morgen to his friend Dr. Eschenburg, Mayor of Lübeck, the city where, in peace times, Gen. von Morgen was stationed as commander of the Eighty-first Infantry Brigade. Gen. von Morgen is 56 years old. He has been in the army since 1878, when he was appointed Lieutenant in the Sixty-third Infantry Brigade. He served in the German campaign in the Kamerun in 1894 and suppressed the rebellion there in 1896 and 1897. In the latter year he served also in the Thessaly campaign, attached to the headquarters of Edhem Pasha, and in 1898 he accompanied the German Emperor on the latter's journey to Palestine. The General wrote:

SUWALKI, Sept. 13.

Yesterday, after a short fight, I captured Suwalki, and I am now seated in the Government Palace. This morning I marched into the city with my division, and was greeted at the city limits by a priest and the Mayor, who offered me bread and salt. (The Russian officials had fled.) It was a glorious moment for me. I have appointed a General Staff officer as Governor of the Government of Suwalki.

To-morrow we continue to march against the enemy. The army of Rennenkampf is completely destroyed. Thirty thousand men captured. Rennenkampf and the Commander in Chief, Nicholas Nicholaiewitch, fled from Insterburg in civilian garb.

The plan of the Russians was to get us into a pot, but it was frustrated. The Twelfth Russian Army Corps, which was advancing from the south to flank our army, was beaten by me on Sept. 7, at Bialla, and on Sept. 9 at Lyck and was forced back over the border.

You know that I always yearned for martial achievements. I had never expected them to be as great and glorious as these, however. I owe them in the first place to the vigorous offensive and bravery of my troops. I was probably foolhardy on Sept. 9, when I attacked a force thrice my superior in numbers, and in a fortified position; but even if I had been beaten I should have carried out the task assigned to me, for this Russian corps could no longer take part in the decisive battle. And so, in the evening, I sent in my last battalion and attacked by storm the village of Bobern, lying on the left wing. This, my last effort, must so have impressed the Russians that they began the retirement that very night. On the morning of the 10th of September the last trenches were taken.

My opponents were picked troops of the Russian Army--Finnish sharpshooters.

Health conditions with me are tolerable.

(In a later note, Gen. von Morgen added that Gen. von Hindenburg, his Commander in Chief, sent word that he would never forget the valorous deeds that had made possible these victories, and that even before the battle of Lyck the Iron Cross of the Second Class had been accorded to Gen. von Morgen. When he entered Lyck, Gen. von Morgen said, the inhabitants kissed his hands.)

* * * * *

A letter containing a personal touch was sent from the front in the early part of the war by Rudolf Herzog, one of Germany's greatest living poets and novelists. The letter, as originally published, was in rhymed verse. The poet, who visited this country about a year ago and was fêted by Germans in all the chief cities he visited, is the author of numerous novels and romances, dating from 1893 to the present. Herzog lives in a fine old castle overlooking the Rhine, mentioned in his letter, which is as follows:

It had been a wild week. The storm-wind swept with its broom of rain. It lashed us and splashed us, thrashed noses and ears, whistled through our clothing, penetrated the pores of our skin. And in the deluge--sights that made us shudder--gaunt skeleton churches, cracked walls, smoking ruins piled hillock high; cities and villages--judged, annihilated.

Of twenty bridges, there remained but beams rolled up by the waters--and yawning gaps.

Not a thought remained for the distant homeland and dear ones far away; the only thought, by day and by night: On to the enemy, come what may! No mind intent on any other goal. No time to lose! No time to lose! Haste! Haste!

And forward and backward and criss-cross through the gray Ardennes the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing day after day.

Captain of the Guard! You? From the Staff Headquarters?

He shouts my name as he approaches:

"Congratulations! Congratulations!"

And he waves a paper above a hundred heads.

"Telegram from home! Make way, there, you rascals! At the home of our poet--I've just learned it--a little war girl has arrived!"

I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins? * * *

Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.

My little girl! I have a little girl in my home! * * *

You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time. * * *

I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men, for a single heart-throb, listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's lips, stand there and smile around me in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness.

And yet it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.

* * * * *

The following is written from the front by Corp. T. Trainor:

We have had German cavalry thrown at us six times in the last four hours, and each time it has been a different body, so that they must have plenty to spare. There is no eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play with us, whatever the Germans may do.

The strain is beginning to tell on them more than on us, and you can see by the weary faces and trembling hands that they are beginning to break down.

One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what he had been through. The French are fighting hard all round us with a grit and go that will carry them through.

Have you ever seen a little man fighting a great, big, hulking giant who keeps on forcing the little chap about the place until the giant tires himself out, and then the little one, who has kept his wind, knocks him over? That's how the fighting here strikes me.

We are dancing about round the big German Army, but our turn will come. Our commanders know their business, and we shall come out on top all right.

Sergt. Major McDermott does not write under ideal literary conditions, but his style is none the worse for the inspiration furnished by the shrieking shell.

I am writing to you with the enemy's shells bursting and screaming overhead; but God knows when it will be posted, if at all.

We are waiting for something to turn up to be shot at, but up to now, though their artillery has been making a fiendish row all along our front, we haven't seen as much as a mosquito's eyelash to shoot at. That's why I am able to write, and some of us are able to take a bit of rest while the others keep "dick."

There is a fine German airship hanging around like a great blue bottle up in the sky, and now and then our gunners are trying to bring it down, but they haven't done it yet.

It's the quantity, not the quality of the German shells that is having effect on us, and it's not so much the actual damage to life as the nerve-racking row that counts for so much.

Townsmen who are used to the noise and roar of streets can stand it better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far the fittest men are those of regiments mainly recruited in the big cities.

A London lad near me says it's no worse than the roar of motor 'buses and other traffic in the city on a busy day.

GAELIC SPIRIT IRREPRESSIBLE.

The Gaelic spirit has not deserted Sergt. T. Cahill under fire. He writes:

The Red Cross girleens with their purty faces and their sweet ways are as good men as most of us, and better than some of us. They are not supposed to venture into the firing line at all, but they get there all the same, and devil a one of us durst turn them away.

Mike Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him and his ways.

Yesterday he got a stick and put a cap on it so that it peeped up above the trench just like a man, and then the Germans kept shooting away at it until they must have used up tons of ammunition.

But Mike Clancy was not the only practical joker in the trenches, as the following from a wounded soldier shows:

Our men have just had their papers from home, and have noted, among other things, that "Business as Usual" is the motto of patriotic shopkeepers.

In last week's hard fighting the Wiltshires, holding an exposed position, ran out of ammunition, and had to suspend firing until a party brought fresh supplies across the open under a heavy fire.

Then the wag of the regiment, a Cockney, produced a biscuit tin with "Business as Usual" crudely printed on it, and set it up before the trenches as a hint to the Germans that the fight could now be resumed on more equal terms.

Finally the tin had to be taken in because it was proving such a good target for the German riflemen, but the joker was struck twice in rescuing it.

A wounded private of the Buffs relates how an infantryman got temporarily separated from his regiment at Mons, and lay concealed in a trench while the Germans prowled around.

Just when he thought they had left him for good ten troopers left their horses at a distance and came forward on foot to the trench.

The hidden infantryman waited until they were half way up the slope, and then sprang out of his hiding place with a cry of "Now, lads, give them hell!" Without waiting to see the "lads" the Germans took to their heels.

HIGHLAND KILT A POOR UNIFORM.

Why Highland kilts are not the ideal uniform for modern warfare is concisely summed up by Private Barry:

Most of the Highlanders are hit in the legs. * * * It is because of tartan trews and hose, which are more visible at a distance than any other part of their dress. Bare calves also show up in sunlight.

Private McGlade, writing to his aged mother in County Monaghan, bears witness to the oft-made assertion that the German soldiers object to a bayonet charge:

I am out of it with a whole skin, though we were all beat up, as you might expect after four days of the hardest soldiering you ever dreamed of. We had our share of the fighting, and I am glad to say we accounted for our share of the German trash, who are a poor lot when it comes to a good, square ruction in the open.

We tried hard to get at them many times, but they never would wait for us when they saw the bright bits of steel at the business end of our rifles.

Some of our finest lads are now sleeping their last sleep in Belgium, but, mother dear, you can take your son's word for it that for every son of Ireland who will never come back there are at least three Germans who will never be heard of again.

Before leaving Belgium we arranged with a priest to have masses said for the souls of our dead chums, and we scraped together what odd money we had, but his Reverence wouldn't hear of it, taking our money for prayers for the relief of the brave lads who had died so far from the old land to rid Belgian soil of the unmannerly German scrubs.

Some of the Germans don't understand why Irishmen should fight so hard for England, but that just shows how little they know about us.

Seven British soldiers who after the fighting round Mons last week became detached from their regiments and got safely through the German lines arrived in Folkestone to-day from Boulogne. They belonged to the Irish Rifles, Royal Scots, Somerset Light Infantry, Middlesex and Enniskillen Fusiliers, and presented a bedraggled appearance, wearing old garments given them by the French to aid their disguise.

One of the seven, a Londoner, described the fight his regiment had with the Germans at a village near Maubeuge.

The British forces were greatly outnumbered by the Germans, but held their ground for twenty-four hours, inflicting very heavy loss on the enemy, although suffering severely itself.

He declared that the Germans held women up in front of them when attacking. "It was worse than savage warfare."

Paddy, an Irishman, stated that the soldiers got little or no food during the fighting. "When we got our bacon cooking the Germans attacked us."

A Scotsman of the party said he saw a hospital flying the Red Cross near Mons destroyed by shrapnel. "When we were ordered to retire," he continued, "we did so very reluctantly. But we did not swear. Things are so serious there, it makes you feel religious."

FROM MEN IN THE FLEET.

Equally interesting are some of the letters from men with the fleet. Tom Thorne, writing to his mother in Sussex, says:

Before we started fighting we were all very nervous, but after we joined in we were all happy and most of us laughing till it was finished. Then we all sobbed and cried.

Even if I never come back, don't think I've died a painful death. Everything yesterday was as quick as lightning.

We were in action on Friday morning off Heligoland. I had a piece of shell as big as the palm of my hand go through my trousers, and as my trouser legs were blowing in the breeze I think I was very lucky.

* * * * *

A gunroom officer in a battle cruiser writes:

The particular ship we were engaged with was in a pitiful plight when we had finished with her--her funnels shot away, masts tottering, great gaps of daylight in her sides, smoke and flame belching from her everywhere. She speedily heeled over and sank like a stone, stern first. So far as is known, none of her crew was saved. She was game to the last, let it be said, her flag flying till she sank, her guns barking till they could bark no more.

Although we ourselves suffered no loss, we had some very narrow escapes. Three torpedoes were observed to pass us, one within a few feet. Four-inch shells, too, fell short or were ahead of us. The sea was alive with the enemy's submarines, which, however, did us no damage. They should not be underrated, these Germans. That cruiser did not think, apparently, of surrender.