CHAPTER XX

SIEGE WARFARE

The kind of modern siege in which the Allies are engaged, unlike the bombardment of a modern fortress, but like the sieges of old times, is bound to be a protracted affair. Still it is not likely that Germany will hold out as long as Troy did. From her geographical position, nearly surrounded by the host of enemies that her arrogance and self-seeking have arrayed against her, she was bound sooner or later to be the besieged party, unless she succeeded in crushing one or more of them by her first impetuous rush. It was not enough to drive them back. She had to annihilate them or at least to bring them to terms at the outset, and that she failed to do. Now, for the time being, she has created troublesome diversions in the Balkans and other parts of the world outside the main field of action, and has even opened a sally-port in the direction of Constantinople. But everywhere else her exits, and to a certain extent her entrances, are barred, north and south by the fleets of the Allies and the hitherto no-man’s land of two neutral states, on the east by the armies of Russia, and on the west by lines of trenches every bit as strong as her own.

It is on this side that the pressure of the siege bears most heavily upon her, and that in all probability the breach in her defences will be made. But, as has been ably pointed out in _The Times_ by Colonel Repington, whose military judgment carries more weight in France than that of any other English writer on the war, that breach will only be made by an even and continuous distribution of the pressure exerted along the whole of the western line, simultaneously with a sustained attack on the eastern front. It will not be effected by local offensives, however carefully prepared and however gallantly carried out. The day of brilliant cavalry charges on a grand scale is over. Even combined advances of infantry are a form of tactics that must be used as sparingly as possible, because of the enormous waste of life which under present conditions they necessarily entail. The slight advantage gained by the English last September at Loos and the French in Champagne was far too dearly earned. It was magnificent, but it was not siege tactics, and it is only by acting on the principle that the war, more particularly in the west, is not a series of battles but a siege, that it can be won. The time has come when it must be realized that partial offensives of this kind, carried on over a minute section of the front, are not worth the cost. The advance must be made by continuous sapping, that is to say by hammering away with artillery, and, so far as is possible, with nothing but artillery, along the whole line of the enemy’s trenches at the same time, without giving them any rest or any chance of shifting reinforcements from one part of the line or from one front to another.

During the months of comparative stagnation which are now, it may be hoped, drawing to a close, this policy has not been adopted, partly, no doubt, because it could not be. There were not enough guns and not enough high explosive shells. Once or twice they have been massed in huge quantities at some given point, as on those twenty-five miles between Auberives and Massiges in the Champagne country, and they have shown what can be done—provided that too much is not attempted. Our one object is to drive the enemy back. We have to oust them from the ground which they now occupy. That is what is going finally to break the _morale_ of Germany and the German army. We shall never do it, except at a prohibitive cost, as long as in our attacks we sacrifice length to depth. It is far more valuable to us, and far surer and less costly, to gain say one hundred square miles of ground by advancing a quarter of a mile along a front of four hundred miles than to win back the same acreage by pushing the enemy back five miles along a front of twenty.

But all this is in the future, and is the business of strategists and generals, and not of a newspaper correspondent, who may, after all, be completely wrong in his ideas. All that he can usefully do is to try to give his personal impressions of the way in which the present (or the old) plan has worked. Up till now it has in all probability been the only method that could be adopted, because of the lack of the guns and munitions necessary for a more comprehensive plan of action. It is commonly supposed that in this respect the French have been better off than the English. But in any case they, too, have been hampered in their general scheme of attack by a similar necessity for a sparing use of artillery ammunition, and it is this shortage which has principally dictated their conduct of the war of the trenches ever since it began.

At certain points all along the line, from the Channel to Verdun and from Verdun to the Vosges, there are what the German journalist quoted in the last chapter called “Craters of Death,” where, as the siege has progressed, both French and English have, so to speak, brought their battering-rams to bear on the defences. These points have not been chosen because they are the weakest, for there are no weakest points in continuous lines of trenches. One part of the system is as strong as another. But there are, though it sounds paradoxical to say so, strongest points, where the enemy, either because he is particularly well served by lines of communication behind, or because he is particularly anxious for strategical reasons to break through in front, has for months past concentrated greater numbers of guns and men. And since these strongest points have no “weakest” points on either side of them by which they might be turned, it is precisely there that the besiegers have been obliged to concentrate their attack. At the same time any attempt to rush the less thickly manned lines of trenches in between them has been rendered practically impossible by the fact that owing to aeroplanes and telephones and motor-traction any given part of the line can be very quickly strengthened, even to the extent of bringing fresh bodies of troops halfway across Europe for the purpose. Under these conditions the position of stalemate to which both besiegers and besieged have very nearly been reduced was practically unavoidable.

This second stage of the war, that is to say the whole wearisome period of the fighting in the trenches, I do not propose to follow at all closely. Even in the struggles round the “craters of death” there was, except on rare occasions, a sameness and a lack of dramatic incident which would be bound to depress the spirits of the general reader. As regards its bearing on the final issue, by far its most important feature is that it has not depressed the spirits of the French soldiers. Even more remarkable than the heroism which from time to time they have shown in making or repelling attacks on a more or less extended scale is the extraordinary cheerfulness with which they have accepted the dreary monotony as well as the wearing daily attrition imposed upon them by the stagnant immobility of the trenches. I have spoken already of this remarkable buoyancy of spirits, which so far as I have seen is characteristic of the whole of the French armies, and need not enlarge upon it again, except to remark that it is one of the most valuable assets upon which the Allies are able to count.

But there is one special aspect of it about which I should like to say a word or two, though it deserves a whole volume to itself. Because the Army of the Republic is a national army, there is no trade or calling or profession which is not represented in its ranks. France not only expects but requires that every able-bodied man of military age shall do his duty in the defence of his country, unless she has other work to put into his hands. Amongst the rest she calls upon the clergy, and with one consent these men of peace, instead of beginning to make excuse, have answered to the call with a fervour of patriotism which is excelled by no single class of their fellow-countrymen. Before the divorce between Church and State, garrison chaplains, bearing duly specified military grades, were part of the regular equipment of the army. When the State refused to recognize them any longer as functionaries, all priests became at once liable along with the laymen of their own year to ordinary military service. Consequently in the present war, either as men on the active list or as reservists or territorials, thousands of _abbés_ and _curés_, besides monks, novices, choristers, lay brothers, and other servants of the Church, are now serving with the colours.

As far as possible they are employed in the non-combatant ranks, but large numbers of them, both as officers and privates, serve shoulder to shoulder in the trenches and on the field of battle with the other fighting-men. As a body they seem to be inspired, even more than most soldiers, by the courage which springs from contempt of death. In nearly all the countless stories that are told of their heroism the dominant note is the same. Having once, in the pronouncement of their clerical vows, laid down their lives in the service of God, they are always ready to lay them down again in the service of their fellow-soldiers, whenever and wherever the need arises, without for one moment counting the cost. Time after time, like the many humble village _curés_, too old or too weak to serve their country in arms, who have nevertheless gone to meet the barbarians and death without flinching, they have shown to the enemy and to all the world that France has no more gallant sons and soldiers than her priests.

But they have done something more than that. Though they have become the soldiers of France they have remained the soldiers of Christ. Here is one of many instances that come crowding into my mind. A private soldier, badly wounded, was lying in one of the military hospitals, and, believing that he was on the point of death, asked anxiously for the services of a priest. At the moment none was to be found. The man in the next bed, with his thigh hideously shattered by a shell, was lying almost unconscious in a state of partial coma. Gradually, however, he realized what the doctor and the nurses of the ward were talking about. Weak and exhausted as he was, he managed to make one of them understand that he was himself a priest, and would pronounce the absolution of his fellow-soldier if she would hold up his hand; and then, as he whispered the words that brought to the other the comfort that he wanted, his own soul passed away.

That story is typical of the kind of lives which numbers of these men in their double capacity have led and are leading at the present moment. In out-of-the-way corners of the field, far from any church or chaplain, it is an everyday occurrence for some private soldier, with his clerical robes hastily thrown over his uniform, to celebrate mass for the men and officers of his regiment before the battle begins; or, when it is over, with the grime and the blood of it still thick upon him, to hear the confessions of the dying and give them the last consolations of their faith. Undoubtedly the influence of these soldier-priests and the influence of the religion for which they stand have had a large share in maintaining the wonderful _morale_ of the French troops. Even the _franc maçons_, consciously or unconsciously, are affected by it. The war has brought the whole nation as well as the armies face to face with the realities of life and death. They have this enormous advantage over the Germans, that for them the war they are engaged in is a holy war. They are not fighting for what they can get. They are fighting to defend and to free their homes, and therefore they feel and know that they are on the side of freedom and justice and right. In their trouble and peril they have turned instinctively to the consolations and the sustaining strength of what through long ages was their national as well as their personal religion. They have returned to the faith of their fathers. Not only individual soldiers and civilians but the authorities of the State themselves have awakened to the fact that in the great crises of life men and women have a natural craving for something spiritual, something outside of and higher than themselves.

Right at the beginning of the war the official rulers of the State and the Army did a wonderful thing. They took the step of reappointing regular _aumoniers_, or military chaplains, to the troops of the Republic; that is to say, they had the courage to undo their own work by deliberately revoking part of the anti-clerical legislation which, some years before, the Government had imposed on the country. In the autumn of 1914 I saw in a town near the eastern frontier a remarkable example of this same disposition on the part of the officials of the State to close, at all events to some extent, the breach between State and Church. In the cathedral of the town (a favourite target for the bombs of German aeroplanes), a solemn service was being celebrated in memory of the soldiers who had fallen during the war. And inside the rails of the chancel, on a chair placed opposite to the throne of the Archbishop and by the side of the General commanding the district, was seated the Prefect of the Department. It was the first time for fifteen years that a Prefect of France, acting in his official capacity and wearing his official uniform, had attended any form of public religious service. To the congregation, therefore, his presence at that solemn moment, while the thunder of Beethoven’s funeral march on the cathedral organ was almost drowned by the thunder of the guns on the heights outside the town, was a fact of the deepest significance. It was the outward and visible sign of the spirit of national unity and brotherly love which sprang into life all over France at the moment when war was declared. It was one of many proofs that for France and her highest interests the war has not been fought and the dead have not died in vain.

* * * * * *

Before I was carried away into this digression by the admiration which every one must feel for these brave soldier-priests of France, I was talking of the way in which, on the eastern half of the front, the chief energy of the war of the trenches has been concentrated at certain definite points or “craters of death.” West of the Vosges these points are all in the plain of the Woevre and the Hauts de Meuse, that is to say, along the sides of the St. Mihiel salient. The chief of them are at Les Eparges, on the north side of the angle, in the Forest of Apremont at the angle itself, and near Pont-à-Mousson at the eastern extremity of its southern side. At, and to a lesser extent between, these points the French and the Germans have now been at it, hammer and tongs, for more than a year. I use the expression “hammer and tongs” designedly, because I can think of no other that so well expresses the position. St. Mihiel and the Camp des Romains are situated at the hinge of the tongs, Les Eparges and Pont-à-Mousson towards the extremities of the two legs. With the object of squeezing the legs closer and closer together, so as to crush the German forces between them or at least to force them to retire on Metz, the French have been hammering away at these places for months past, in accordance with sound dynamic principles. At the same time from the Forest of Apremont they have pounded even more vigorously at the Camp des Romains. Dynamically the process of applying the force of the hammer at the St. Mihiel end of the tongs is not so advantageous, but it is, as I have tried to show, necessary. Force must be met by an equivalent force if it is desired to prevent motion in a particular direction, and they have at least so far succeeded in their object as to produce a state of equilibrium.

The position is one of great interest. What the Germans were trying to do at the end of September, 1914, they were still aiming at a year later, and, for all that one can foresee, the situation may be unchanged up to the time when this book is published, or even later. They wanted, and they still want, to cross the Meuse at St. Mihiel and in a sense complete the investment of Verdun. At any time since their first attempt at this manœuvre failed they might have repeated it, or would have repeated it if they could. If they had succeeded the consequences for the French and the whole of the Allies’ line would have been just as serious as at the beginning. Never was there a clearer case of “As you were,” and the fact that the point of danger for the French and the point of opportunity for the Germans was at the angle of the salient has made the situation there more pregnant with possibilities than at almost any other part of the front. The unsatisfactory side of it for our Allies is that because of their failure to turn the enemy out of the Camp des Romains they have not been able to put an end to the occupation of the Woevre, and that to a certain extent the menace of a forward movement still exists. On the other hand, the menace has always been held well in check, and the legs of the tongs are sensibly nearer to each other than they were fifteen months ago.

Through the closing months of 1914 and the whole of the following year a steady pressure was kept up on both sides of the salient by part of the Verdun garrison force and of the Third Army on the north side, that is to say, from the Meuse eastwards, and by part of the Toul garrison and of the Second Army operating from the south towards the Rupt de Mad. As the result of this general pressure, supplemented by occasional offensive movements in greater force, the enemy were driven back slightly on both their fronts.

The first of these offensive movements was made directly on St. Mihiel from the west. An attack was made on the German troops occupying the left bank of the river, and at first it had every appearance of being successful. The enemy were driven out of the suburb and barracks of Chauvoncourt and retired across the Meuse. Following in hot pursuit, the leading French troops took possession of the barracks—and fell into a trap. The ground had been mined by the Germans before their retreat, and the French paid the consequences of their impetuous advance. Practically the whole of the force that had entered the barracks was destroyed, and in the confusion the enemy successfully counter-attacked and remained masters of Chauvoncourt, which they still hold.

The next attack, a much bigger and brilliantly successful affair, was made at Les Eparges, twelve or thirteen miles north of St. Mihiel and the same distance south-east of Verdun. One of its objects was to defeat the enemy’s project of investing Verdun by driving him further back in the direction of Vigneulles, which lies about mid-way between the two fronts of the salient, and at the same time to threaten his position in the Forest of La Mortagne, to the west of the road from Vigneulles to Les Eparges. The operations, which began on February 17th and lasted till April 10th, were carried out with great determination by the French, and in the end they not only pushed their trenches forward a considerable distance, but were able to occupy a much safer and more commanding position. Before the advance was made the Germans had constructed a very strong redoubt, to the east of the village of Les Eparges, which was the main objective of the attack. After a careful preparation first by saps and mines, and then by sustained artillery fire, it was gallantly stormed and then evacuated and finally retaken, after a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, on February 19th. For the next six or seven weeks there was continual fighting on more or less the same ground till, at the beginning of April, the Crown Prince, who had returned from one of his prolonged and mysterious absences to the command of the Fifth Army, had the mortification of adding yet another to the list of his failures, and the French finally and conclusively gained the upper hand. They had fought with extraordinary dash and courage, and had suffered severely. But the result was well worth the cost. The position which they now hold commands a wide view northwards and eastwards over the plain of the Woevre. From the east side of the Forest of Amblonville, in which they have their main cantonments, the ground falls with a fairly steep descent till it rises again to the long bare spur of Les Eparges, over a thousand feet high, looking out over the plain. They are no longer exposed to the risk of an unexpected attack, as it is impossible for the enemy to concentrate troops in the ravines and behind the slopes which separate the forest from Les Eparges without being seen. The other main advantages which the French have gained on this side of the wedge are that they have made some advance on the two main roads, six or seven miles apart, which run between Verdun and Metz, one along the valley of the Orne past Etain, the other from Fresnes in the direction of Mars-la-Tour. They have also made a slight move forward on the centre of the German line at Lamorville, a few miles to the north of St. Mihiel.

On the southern side of the wedge the chief French efforts have been made at the two extremities of the line, at the Bois d’Ailly and the Bois Brulé, in the Forest of Apremont, and, fourteen and twenty-one miles further east, at the Bois de Mort-Mare, directly south of Thiaucourt, and the Bois le Prêtre, a little to the west of Pont-à-Mousson. The approach to the Forest of Apremont from the Meuse is one of the many places on this part of the front where the French side of the low hills behind the trenches are for miles honeycombed with cave-dwellings. They have been there so long now that they have become part of the landscape and look as if they had always belonged to it. I suppose when the war is over they will still be left for the edification of the cheap trippers and tourists of the world. What will not be left for them to see, for it is gone already, is the Bois Brulé. In the height of summer you can walk for hours along the trenches, through acres of what was once a green forest, and see never a leaf. Nothing is left of the trees but shattered stumps, cut clean off by the shells close to the ground. That gives one some idea of the severity of the endless duel of the guns. At the east end of the wood the hill on which it stands drops down sharply into the plain, and through the loopholes in the front trenches (where you do not linger for more than a few seconds at a time) you look down on the brown roofs of the village of Apremont, three or four hundred feet below you. It is full of Germans, though they never show themselves. But their advanced trenches are much closer than that, on the top of the reverse slope of the hill, in some places at the regulation nearest distance of about fifteen yards. Behind the hill, that is to say, on the south or French side of it, and as far as one can see to the east, the plain stretches out flat and unbroken (except by the lines of French and German trenches cut across it), backed on the south by a series of long, straight, level-topped hills, écheloned one behind the other, and ending far away to the right in the blue haze where the heights of the Moselle begin. That is where Pont-à-Mousson lies, and Bois le Prêtre, the greater part of it another dreary forest of stumps, through which the battle raged backwards and forwards again and again for months—or is it centuries?—till at last the whole of it was won and kept for France by her splendid soldiers.

And that is what they are doing all along the line. The progress is slow, but what changes there are in the position of the trenches are in favour of the French. Foot by foot they are winning back the land which was ravished from them at the beginning, and the longer the struggle for the possession of the Woevre goes on the surer it becomes that the occasional offensive movements of the French are assaults and those of the German attempts at sallies. The St. Mihiel salient is still a nuisance, but it has almost, if not quite, ceased to be a danger, and sooner or later it is practically certain that the prolonged attempt to cross the Meuse will have to be abandoned, and that not a single German will be left in France from Verdun to the Vosges.

In the Vosges themselves and in the Sundgau, ever since the retirement from Mulhouse, there has been continual fighting, sometimes of the most violent description, in which the Chasseurs Alpins and the Chasseurs-à-pied, splendidly supported by the French field artillery (supplemented during the latter part of last year with guns of heavier calibre), have done wonderfully fine work. They have not only successfully carried out their main task, which was to prevent the enemy from setting foot on the western slopes of the Vosges, but in the valleys of the Thur and the Doller and at other points along the line have gained a considerable amount of valuable ground. Further north, in the district of Senones, though they have not succeeded in penetrating again into the valley of the Bruche, they have kept the enemy well in check, and at the extreme right of the line, towards the Swiss frontier, have established themselves in a very strong position from which they are able to keep a watchful eye on Altkirch and Mulhouse, and at the same time to guard effectively against any attempt at either a straightforward or a roundabout attack on Belfort.

The main fighting has centred round Thann, Hartmannsweilerkopf, Cernay, Steinbach, the Ballon of Guebweiler, the valley of the Fecht, Reichackerkopf, and the valley of Münster, but from the Donon to Pfetterhausen on the Swiss frontier, especially on the southern section of this front, there is hardly any ground that has not been the scene of repeated combats, the net result of which is that the French have almost everywhere made slight advances. The summit of Hartmannsweilerkopf in particular, because it guards the entrance to the valley of St. Amarin, has been bathed in blood over and over again. Four or five times it has been taken and retaken, with dogged perseverance and extraordinary heroism, first by the French and then by the Germans, and the struggle for its possession still continues, though at present it is in the hands of the French. For both sides this famous mountain-top has been one of the most deadly of all those terrible “craters of death.”

Beyond this short general statement I shall not for the present attempt to follow the ins and outs of the campaign on this part of the line. Its strategical importance has been far greater than has appeared, and, once the weather conditions permit, there is always a chance of its developing into an attempt at a big offensive movement by one side or the other. But as regards the story of those heroic struggles we have had, I think, our fill of fighting. In the daily engagements on the plain of Alsace and among the fir-clad mountains of the Vosges the men of the armies of the east have shown the same enthusiastic devotion to their country, the same quiet disregard of danger and death, and the same cheerful endurance and unfailing confidence in the final triumph of right as their brother-soldiers who fought and died for the safety of Epinal and Nancy and Verdun and Toul. Higher praise than that they cannot have. The soldiers of France are the fearless sons of a great-hearted nation.

As I draw near to the end of this imperfect attempt to show the greatness of the debt which England owes to France, one other thought about them comes to me with increasing force. The French have played the game: they have fought the good fight like knights and gentlemen. That, more than almost anything else, is the reason why Englishmen have come to look upon them as something much more than Allies. Because of it they have forged a bond with us and our children’s children which Time itself will hardly be able to weaken. They are our brothers, not only in arms, but in all that civilization stands for. The Germans are—different. They are our enemies, not only because they are fighting against us, but much more because of the way in which they have fought. As a state, and, in cases that cannot be numbered, as individuals they have turned their backs upon principles and ideals by which all honourable nations and men must strive to rule their lives. Their scutcheon is blackened with arson and murder and pillage and rape. Their hands are red with the blood of the innocent. To the ends of the earth and of time they have made their name a byword and a reproach. But—worse than all this—they glory in their shame. They claim that their dishonour is honour and their wrong the right. Their eyes are holden that they cannot see. Some day they will be opened and they will see themselves and their crimes in all their revolting ugliness. For it is unbelievable that a whole nation of ordinary men and women can continue to allow themselves to be blinded by the false and cruel and iniquitous standards of a few devils in human form. But for the present all their sense of right and wrong is being eaten away by a foul and malignant cancer. Till that cancer has been cut out of their being by the sword they are a deadly danger to the whole world, for their success would infallibly spread its poison into every country on which, in their present condition, they were able to lay their hand. Till the sword has done its work, as firmly and as thoroughly as the surgeon’s scalpel, there is not one of the allied nations which can or will think of peace. Then and then only will come the end of the war.

CHAPTER THE LAST

GERMANY AND THE ALLIES

Once upon a time, in the careless, happy days before the war, a Royal Scotch Princess was married one fine morning to a Royal Irish Prince in a Royal English chapel. The chapel was ancient and small, and the young pair had so many friends that though not nearly all of them could be invited to the ceremony, they filled it to overflowing. Besides the Sovereign Head of both their houses and the State, there were present two Queens (I had almost said two fairy Godmothers) who walked down the chapel hand-in-hand looking as sweet and almost as young as the bride herself, I forget how many other princes and princesses, and scores and scores of the great lights of the land and especially of the legal profession (for where the country-to-be-ruled is there will the lawyers be gathered together). There were not many young people—the occasion was too important and the seats too few—and, except for the brothers and sisters and cousins of the two principals nearly all the guests were married and arrived in couples (like the animals coming into the ark out of the rain) dressed in their finest and full of their own or their ancestors’ importance. For to be there at all, you understand, you had to be SOMEBODY, or at least to the third and fourth generation SOMEBODY’S offspring, unless you belonged to that mischievous but necessary profession the British Press, the representatives of which, the only blot on this brilliant assembly, were crowded together in a narrow position of vantage so close to the highest and furthest back row of the seats of the mighty that the shadows of the aigrettes in front quivered and danced upon their note-books.

To the strains of the organ, appropriately tender and jubilant by turns, the chapel gradually filled with its distinguished audience, and almost the last to arrive before the Royal party were an old old servant of the State and his matronly spouse, who took their places on two of the gilded chairs immediately below the Press box. Before she shook out the folds of her dress for the last time the lady turned round and, staring straight into the face of the newspaper man behind her, at a range of about two feet, said to her husband in a loud, clear voice (he is rather deaf), “Oh, it’s only reporters.”

Until you have tried it you have no idea of the degree of polite contempt which can be put into that last word. And even when you have tried, and tried your hardest, you will still, if you are only an amateur at the game, fall far short of the dizzy height of scorn reached by this professional expert without any conscious effort at all. For pride of rank and contempt of her inferiors had become to her second nature.

Once upon a time the same great lady (or perhaps it was another) was on her way to the gilded chamber to which her husband had been raised, chiefly by his own forensic skill, but partly by the nimble pencils of the men who recorded his eloquent speeches for the public press. In the square outside there was a large and excited crowd, some sympathetic, some jeering and hostile, and for a moment her carriage was stopped while the police arrested a pale-faced, elderly woman who had been trying to exercise what she believed to be her legal right of asking for an audience with the representatives of her sovereign. Once more in the same high-pitched voice and with an even deeper tinge of scorn, she explained the situation to her companion: “It’s only one of those wretched suffragettes.”

This book is not a suffragist or anti-suffragist pamphlet. It is an attempt to describe a single phase of the war, and at the same time to consider some of its actual and possible effects. Still, it seems to me worth saying that in England before the war there was in all classes far too much of the spirit expressed in the thoughtless and belittling “only” of these simple little true stories, and that is why I have told them. We were much too fond of using such phrases as “only a woman” or “only a parson.” There were cases before the war when the keepers of public restaurants refused to serve a fellow-subject with food and drink because he was only a soldier—wearing the King’s uniform. That sounds odd to-day. There have been times in our history, and not so very long ago either, when “only a Frenchman” (with or without a qualifying adjective) was the regulation way of speaking of our present Allies and tried and trusty friends, not only because they wore the wrong collars and hats, but because we were generally inclined to believe that an Englishman could tackle at least three of them with his left hand.

The unwholesome part of this particular form of national pride has, we may hope, left us for good. (It has now, incidentally, infected the Bulgarians, who say to-day that the Western nations can only fight in the trenches, and that in the open field one Bulgar is equal to five French or English.) We began to learn the folly of it even before the war. Sous-lieutenant Carpentier, of the French air-service, taught us a few lessons. So did Jack Johnson—though he was only a nigger. So did the football teams from Africa and New Zealand, though they were only Colonials, and so did our competitors in the Olympic Games, though they were only foreigners. But more than anything else, it is the war that has been and must be still our tutor. It is teaching us the lesson which cock-sure St. Peter (who must surely have had English blood in his veins) learnt long ago at Joppa—that nothing is common or unclean. It is teaching us that we must get rid of the kind of Lucifer pride that goes before a fall. It is teaching us to respect not only our Allies and our foes, but each other. We have found out that the whole of Europe can fight. As a body of soldiers, General French’s contemptible little army, which was sent to fill the gap at Mons, was probably the finest fighting force, regimental officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, that ever stepped on to a field of battle. But it was we non-combatants who wore most of their laurels. At the beginning of this war and in all previous wars, in our complacent English way, we have always thought and talked of our regular army (when any part of it was at war) as though it were actually the nation, instead of only a minute fraction of it, as though it was we ourselves who were doing the fighting. We have a better right to our national pride now that the Government of the nation has decided and the nation (or most of it) has willingly agreed that at least all its unmarried men of military age shall be trained not only to defend their country but to take their stand beside the other allied nations in their battle for something that is far greater and more sacred and more important than the very greatest of them.

I take back nothing of what I have written earlier in this book about our refusal as a nation to bring ourselves in this respect in a line with our Allies. Our consent is not even now completely whole-hearted. For seventeen months we did so refuse, and during that time not all the magnificence of our unparalleled voluntary effort was magnificent enough to banish from the minds of our Allies the consciousness, however politely they might conceal it, that we were lagging behind in the struggle for the freedom of the world. But while we lagged behind—great as our contribution was even then to the common cause—we were learning. Outside our own country we have seen the splendid courage of tiny states like Belgium and Serbia, as well as the wonderful soldier-like qualities of the huge national armies of France and Russia and Italy and Germany. From our own people (and from those others as well) we have learnt that priests and parsons and men of every profession and trade and class and condition, however insignificant we used to think them, can endure hardness as good soldiers, and that women, if they cannot fight, can (besides knitting socks, which was all that they were supposed to be good for before the war began) do almost everything else connected with the war which is commonly regarded as men’s work. Now that we have mastered these elementary principles we shall, if we let the war teach us all that it can, go on to the obvious corollary that no nation and no man and no woman has the right to despise another, and that pride and prejudice are the root of nearly all evil.

The war itself is the strongest possible evidence of that truth. For it was the pride of Germany that made the war—not her fear of being strangled by the surrounding nations, not her need of finding colonies for her surplus population, not her desire for a place under the sun, not her passionate longing to ensure for the world the liberty of the seas, not even her jealousy of England, but her overweening pride.

Between the pride of England and the pride of France there are certain well-marked differences. But both, because of their ancient histories, have pride of race, wholesomely tempered by the consciousness that _noblesse oblige_. Germany has the much more aggressive pride of the successful _parvenu_. Having made herself, within the memory of people now living, she looked upon her work with all the pride of the self-made man, and saw that it was good—after its kind—and straightway aspired to re-make the whole world after her own image and according to her own material conceptions. To do that she thought, quite wrongly, that it was necessary first to subdue it by the sword. She would have been wiser to keep it in its sheath. Her peaceful invasion was far more penetrating and far more likely to compass the end she had in view of making her the dominating nation of the earth. All the world takes her Kultur now at its proper value. But long before the war, up to the very eve of its declaration, German influence, and above all German finance and commerce, had been permeating all the nations now at war with her, as well as all the neutral states, like bindweed and Virginia Creeper running riot in a suburban garden. If the war had not come the independent existence of some of them—Switzerland, for example—would certainly have been choked. Even the larger countries were beginning to suffer. In England the phrase, “Made in Germany,” first an economic measure of self-protection, then a rather feeble joke, and then a byword, was fast becoming a serious menace—if one accepts as just the principle of England for the English—to the real interests of the country. In France, in England, and in other countries there were too many commercial houses and too many people and too many opinions made in Germany, if those countries were to retain their national characteristics and national liberty of thought and action. The seriousness of the mischief in its gravest form all the world has seen lately in the United States, where the Government have had to struggle hard, and not always with success, against the crippling influence of the fear of the German vote, even though, happier than the neutral states of Europe, they were entirely free from the parallel influence—the fear of the German sword.

The process of Germanization was, in fact, as events move in history, rapid and almost universal. But, fortunately for the world, it was not rapid enough for German pride. So the war was made by the rulers of Germany to hurry forward the spread of German Kultur and all that the word implies, or—was permitted by the higher forces or Powers that rule the evolution of the world, in order to check it. To the Allies, who did not begin the war, but did everything in their power to prevent it, the only possible view is that the Powers or rather the Power that rules the evolution not of Germany alone nor of France nor of England, but of the whole world, is a greater and higher power than the rulers of Germany. That is the confidence in which we are fighting. We do not look upon ourselves as the Chosen People, with a special claim on the mercy of God. We have no special form of culture which we think or pretend it is our duty to impose on the rest of the world. We have no need and no right because our cause is a holy one to invent a special unholy code of the rules of war, and of might and right, in order to secure its triumph. These are forged credentials and counterfeit excuses, and not all the ingenuity of the false prophets who plunged deluded Germany into this war can make them pass as genuine. The prophets and the professors prophesied falsely, and the people, whether they loved to have it so or not, must suffer the consequences.

As for ourselves, we believe, rulers and people, that we went into this war with clean hands and clear consciences. But that is no proof that we are right. The Germans, or the majority of them, no doubt think the same of themselves and their country. At the bar of the nations we must be judged, when the war is over. But meanwhile, while it is still in progress, we can get some idea of the way in which the other nations regard us from the opinion of the neutral states and even of our Allies. _Fas est et ab amicis doceri._

Since the war began I have watched it and England’s share in it from Belgium, Holland, France, Italy, and German and French Switzerland, and have talked about it with the inhabitants of various other countries, including Serbs, Greeks, Russians, Swedes, Montenegrins, and Americans. Never once have I heard it said, though I have seen it hinted in print—in German print—that we came into the war from anything but disinterested motives. And that is the one thing that matters. I was once called upon, when the war was less than a year old, to speak about it at a large meeting of French and German Swiss, specially arranged as a meeting of neutrals. Strictly speaking, it was neutral only in name and on the surface, in the sense that the men composing it were persuaded that their highest duty was to stand together for a United Switzerland, and to sink their differences and individual opinions for the sake of their common country. But the differences and individual opinions were there. Every man in the room, whatever his politics (they were mostly Socialists), consciously and strongly wanted one side or the other, France or Germany, to win. But the very fact that as individual jurymen they were not impartial made their verdict, provided that it was unanimous, all the more convincing. It was in the days when every one in Switzerland was still discussing the rights and wrongs of the war—and before a German airman had dropped bombs on that particular Swiss town. Having explained that I personally was not a neutral (an obvious remark which was greeted with loud laughter, as a characteristic specimen of English humour), I went on to the further statement, not necessarily quite so obvious to the whole of that particular audience, that England had come into the war because Germany had been guilty of the violation of Belgium’s neutrality, and that if we had not done so we could never have looked the other nations in the face again. Before the words were out of my mouth they had given their verdict in a unanimous burst of applause. Every man of them, and not only those who naturally sympathized with the Allies, showed as clearly as possible that on that point they needed no persuasion. Germany was guilty, and England had done the one thing possible. And that, as far as my observation goes, is the general opinion abroad, not only in Switzerland (in spite of the natural predisposition of many of the inhabitants to think well of Germany as well as to fear her) but in Holland, the Americas, Sweden, and practically the whole of the neutral world.

As for our Allies the French, we have fought side by side for a year and a half, and each of us knows by now of what mettle the other is made. They started the war with two fixed ideas about us—that we were not a military nation (which, if you compare the relative size of our two armies at the beginning, was, from their point of view, perfectly true), and that, conscious of the might of our fleet and lulled to a state of careless repose by the sense of our island security, it would take us a long time to wake up to the real seriousness of the war. Looking back on what has passed, it is not easy to say that they were wrong. Some of us—millions of us—realized it from the first. But very many did not. Long after the war had begun there were people in England who held that we were doing more than our share and more than enough, because, as was true, we were doing far more than we had promised. There were even some so foolish and so selfish as to say that our soldiers in Flanders were fighting the battles of France, and not the battles of England, since England had not been and never could be attacked. The French were more generous than these narrow-minded myoptics (who, after all, were only a small minority), and at the same time more clear-sighted. Frankly and with deep gratitude they owned that but for the help of England France must have been crushed. But they also believed that when that had happened our turn would inevitably have come next, and that the only hope for England and the world was that France and England should face the foe together with every ounce of their united strength. Small blame to them, then, if they were seriously concerned when they saw that in England alone of all the combatant nations—Germany excepted—the enervating evil of strikes and labour threats could still exist. Small blame to them if they sometimes wondered how long it would be before, for our own security, we overcame our timid objections to the principle of national service.

But they always felt sure, I think, that the time would come—as it has come, in the last days of 1915—when England would face the necessity of putting her whole strength into the field in order to bring the war to a triumphant conclusion, and to complete what a friend of mine, a high official of France, spoke of in a letter which he wrote to me last May, as “le grand œuvre de la guerre, c’est à dire la Rédemption.”

“C’est bien en effet de rédemption qu’il s’agit,” he went on, “la rédemption du monde. L’humanité voit aujourd’hui, elle voit de ses yeux, ce qu’elle serait devenue si les Boches avaient triomphé, imposant au monde leur loi morale. Pour moi je suis tenté parfois de remercier les Boches d’avoir complété ma vie morale: ils m’ont appris la Haine, la haine forte comme l’Amour, qui emplit le cœur, le réchauffe, le brûle parfois, qui décuple les forces, qui tranforme la vie. C’est le rôle que les Boches joueront désormais dans le monde civilisé; ils auront pour fonction d’être un objet de haine. A cette idée l’Angleterre vient peu à peu. Elle n’est pas encore au point, puisque les ouvriers de tramways de Londres ont fait grève: j’ai vu à l’hôpital un petit chasseur-à-pied, amputé du bras droit, qui en lisant cette nouvelle dans le journal s’est mis à pleurer. Mais le Boche commetra bien encore quelques infamies nouvelles, et l’Angleterre tout entière ‘haïra’ d’une haine active et féconde.”

I doubt myself whether we shall ever quite reach that point. The very sound of the phrase, “Redemption by Hate,” is rather strong meat for English minds. We have not got that Latin fervour of expression, and we have not seen a tithe or anything like a tithe of what the French have seen of the abominable works of the Boche, especially in the eastern provinces. I have heard it rumoured that the British soldier—the British Tommy, that is to say—is by way of thinking and saying that brother Boche is not such a bad fellow after all, and that he would not mind making friends with him. At the present moment and until the war is won anything approaching that frame of mind, if it were at all widespread, would be a calamitous and fatal mistake. The British soldier, especially the British soldier of the new armies, has seen, or at least has fought against, the Germans on the fields of battle and in the trenches, where they are at their best. For no one can deny their fighting qualities. He has not seen “with his eyes” what they did behind the present lines of trenches, when they had to deal not with soldiers, but with defenceless civilians. He is a light-hearted and forgiving individual, and does not realize that what they did then they will do again in this war if ever they get the chance. He cannot be expected in the trenches to grasp the far graver general danger of the poisonous influence which was being exercised on the world and on Germany before the war by the whole rotten system of German Militarism and German Kultur, bolstered up by German pride. He has no time while he is fighting our battles to reflect that that influence will infallibly begin its corrupting and deadening work again after the war, and will spread with far greater rapidity, unless the Militarist party is beaten to its knees.

But, even admitting that here and there in the ranks there may be some of this quasi-friendly feeling towards “brother Boche,” the fact, if it is a fact, need disturb no one. We may not have in England the Latin quickness and fervour of the French, but what we have got is the bulldog grip. Once we have taken hold, though we may be slow in starting, we do not let go. Now that our teeth are set we will hold on to the end—and God defend the right!

But what is the right? The proud German dream of a Greater Germany? I think not. I doubt if even the Germans themselves can think so, if they look at it dispassionately as it was presented—three years before the war began—by the Pan-Germanist prophet, Otto Richard Tannenberg. We certainly cannot complain that they did not give us fair warning.

The gist of his country’s dream can be given quite shortly in his own words. “Greater Germany,” he wrote, “can only be made possible by a struggle with Europe. Russia, France, and England will oppose the establishment of Greater Germany. Austria, feeble as she is, will not weigh heavily in the balance. The Germans will not march against Germany. The basis of our enterprise must be the Pan-Germanist principle.

“Some one must make room, either the Slavs of the West or of the South, or else we ourselves! As we are the strongest the choice will not be difficult. We must give up our attitude of modest expectation. There can be no question of remaining without stirring at the point where we stand to-day.... Since 1871 our neighbours have often enough given us chances of appealing to the decision of the sword. Only the wish has been lacking to us. After all, every war can be avoided. But it is also easy to find motives, when one wants to.... As for us, there is no need to hunt for one in the vicissitudes of the relations between the various Courts; one fact is enough for us, that since the foundation, the consolidation, and the expansion of our empire the Germans are being harassed and oppressed in all countries. In Russia, in Austria, in England, in America we have seen a feeling of hatred against Germany develop which we cannot tolerate much longer without losing our standing in those countries.”

That was written, remember, not during the war, nor on the eve of it, but in 1911. We have seen since then how the Pan-Germanist principle that “after all, every war can be avoided, but it is also easy to find motives, if one wants to” was carried out. What we will not see and will not tolerate is the establishment of Greater Germany. For it means amongst other things, according to the prophet Tannenberg, not only that Ireland will become independent of England, and that Austria-Hungary will be incorporated in the German Empire, but that the neutral states of Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Belgium, neutral no longer, will disappear completely from the map of Europe and lose their identity and their freedom in the maw of the same all-embracing and all-devouring organization.

What need have we of further witness? Out of their own mouths the Germans are condemned, for the thousandth time. The war was deliberately provoked, though “like any war,” it might have been avoided. The excuse for it, invented long beforehand, that it was to put an end to the alleged oppression of Germans in Russia, Austria, England, America, and all other countries, was as false as the pretence that any such oppression existed. The real object, the aggrandizement of Germany, not only by the oppression but by the suppression of all the weaker Latin and German races of Europe, was exhibited naked and unashamed, for all the world to see, long before the would-be oppressor drew the sword. It remains to-day more than ever the real object of the war, now that it is unsheathed. No possible special pleading can maintain, much less prove, that the suppression of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland (to say nothing of the partial suppression of France, England, Russia, Italy, and Servia), is right. The mere suggestion of such an idea is an abominable wrong, which God will not defend, and because of it Great Britain will not tolerate, in any shape or form, the establishment of a Greater Germany. We are going to win this war. But let every man of the Allies and above all every Englishman, reflect on this undoubted fact. Because it is a war between right and wrong, between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, we shall not win it until we have learnt its great lesson, until we know as a nation—and we do not know it yet—that its particular message to our own country is the duty of self-sacrifice.

* * * * * *

It is the first day of the New Year. Last night the Old Year, the saddest and most terrible that the world has ever seen, came to its appointed end.

Five or six miles from where I am writing French and Germans were facing each other in unwonted silence under the dark night in the unending vigil of the trenches. A few days and nights ago the roar of the guns at Hartmannsweilerkopf, at Thann, at Altkirch, at Pfetterhausen, at Moos, was more violent and more continuous than anything that has been heard here since the war began. Now there was not a sound. Only in the last few minutes of 1915 a sudden squall of wind and rain swooped down from a cloudless sky. Moaning and weeping like a suffering child that cannot sleep, like a broken-hearted old man worn out by the anguish of life, the Old Year passed away to make room for the New. To-day in a glorious burst of sunshine, the New has come—and every second the air quivers to the shock of the heavy guns. For the weary fight has begun again. The end is not yet. Perhaps even here, through this peaceful valley, so little removed from the actual field of battle, the German hosts may make their last despairing unavailing effort to reach the heart of France. But they will never reach it. The way is barred by the dead, the uncounted glorious dead whose graves stretch from here to the English Channel in an unbroken line. For their sakes, and the sake of all they fought and died for, France and England can never put up the sword till the victory is won. “Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

DELÉMONT, January 1st, 1916.

EPILOGUE

BY MONSIEUR LÉON MIRMAN,

PREFECT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MEURTHE ET MOSELLE.

[M. L. Mirman, who is a Fellow of the University of Paris and was a Mathematical Lecturer at the Lycée of Reims, was elected Deputy for Reims in 1893. He represented the city in Parliament till 1905, when he resigned his post as Deputy to become _Directeur de l’Assistance et de l’Hygiène Publiques_. Interesting as this office was in time of peace, it did not agree in time of war with his ideas of active work, and at the beginning of the month of August, 1914, he was appointed, at his own request, to the frontier post of Prefect of Nancy.—G. F. C.]

Nancy, February 2nd, 1916.

MY DEAR CAMPBELL,

You wrote the last words of your book on the 1st of January, 1916, at Delémont. I am very sorry that you did not open the year 1916 where you began the year 1915, among your friends at Nancy. You would have witnessed there a fresh crime, bearing the unmistakable hall-mark of “Kultur.”

Nancy—as you proved for yourself _de visu_, and as you state in the course of your book—is a _ville ouverte_, without any fortifications. It does not contain a single military establishment. The barracks, which are full of soldiers in time of peace, were emptied on the first day of the war, and were all converted either into hospitals or else into homes of refuge for women and children, refugees whom I gathered in from the destroyed communes. Not one cannon, not one shell, not one soldier is housed in the town. And yet, by means of a long-range gun, mounted at a distance of about 33 kilometres, the Boches are sending us shells of 800 kilos., which fall from a height of 8000 metres and crush a house like a walnut. They have no military objective. What, then, is their purpose? Their intention is twofold. In the first place they wish to “terrorize”; these people are fools, they will never understand that they inspire not fear but horror, and that by acts of this kind they are sowing not terror but hatred. In the second place, they hope to kill, in this great industrial town, a few women and children. This object they can obviously attain more easily than the other; it lies within the reach of every artilleryman, however poor a gunner he may be, who takes a large town as his target.

So far this statement tells you nothing that you did not know before. It is a long time since the Boches gave us their first samples. Every one is acquainted with their methods. To-day it is only of set purpose that it is possible to ignore them. The bombardment, without any military reason, of open towns with no garrison, has become, on the part of the Germans, an everyday affair. But these last bombardments of Nancy show a particularly studied nicety, full of the most delicate refinement.

These heavy guns began to fire on our beloved city of Lorraine in the dawn of the new year, on the sunny morning of the 1st of January, 1916. Picture to yourself, _cher ami_, on the evening of that 1st of January, the family hearth of a German intellectual, a chemist, a philosopher, a historian, or an artist. Herr Doktor is surrounded by his children, they are celebrating the feast of the New Year by eating sausages and jam, or black puddings and sugar. The evening paper arrives. The family stop talking. Herr Doktor unfolds the sheet, and reads aloud the stop-press news: “To-day, January 1, twelve shells of 800 kilos, were fired on Nancy. Several houses were reduced to dust. Two old men were buried under the ruins of one of them. The explosion of a shell killed a child of fifteen months in the arms of its grandmother....” Herr Doktor exclaims: “Wife, children, stand up! We must celebrate this victory on our feet. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch! The children of Nancy have received some New Year’s presents, some kolossal presents, explosive sugar-plums weighing 800 kilos. The year 1916 has opened magnificently. This victory of Nancy will fill with pride and enthusiasm all the sons of Great Germany. Let us thank our old German God for having granted it to us. Let us praise our mighty Emperor. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!”

As for us we buried our dead, poor innocent victims, in silence. We washed the pavement red with blood. We put down this new crime in the list of accounts that has to be settled. And we set ourselves again to our work, with our spirits not cast down but invigorated by the ordeal.

German crimes! You have seen some of them, my dear Campbell, in Lorraine. A day will come when we shall have to make a complete list of them, for the instruction of future generations. There will be some of us, I hope, who will devote ourselves to this task. It would be too monstrous that the veil of oblivion should be drawn over all these crimes.

It is imperative that we should know, that the whole world shall recognize, that our school-children shall learn all the evil that the German has done to mankind. At the head of these plain statements—all the more terrible indictments for the dryness of the official reports—we will place the following declarations, the authors of which are classed amongst the most notorious German writers:

“There is nothing in common between them (Kultur and Civilization). The war which is being waged is that of Kultur against Civilization. Kultur, the spiritual (!) organization of the world, which does not exclude bloody savagery—Kultur which is above morals, reason, science; Kultur, die Sublimerung des Dämonischen.” This unforgettable profession of faith appeared under the signature of Thomas Mann in the _Neue Rundschau_, in the number of November, 1914.[A]

Footnote A:

This quotation is second-hand; I have taken it from the _Au-dessus de la Mélée_ of Romain Rolland. We know that he belongs to the small number of those men, if I may dare call them so, who at the moment when their family is massacred, their house set on fire, their old father shot, their sister violated, isolate themselves in a tower of ivory, from the top of which, looking on at these crimes, and striving to hold an even balance between the assassins and the victims, they proclaim themselves “Above the conflict.”... This state of mind is at least a guarantee to us of the accuracy of the expressions which he quotes from the profession of faith of his “brother” Thomas Mann.

And this criticism, addressed by Maximilian Harden to the German Government, after having treated as lies their distracted efforts to excuse the violation of Belgium neutrality:—

“What is the use of all this fuss?... Might creates right for us. Does a strong man ever submit to the foolish pretensions or the sentimentality of a band of weaklings?”

You know, my dear Campbell, the spirit in which we began this war—the same spirit as that of our English friends. For our part we were governed by respect for treaties, for international agreements, for the laws of war, for the rights of nations, for everything by which men, in their bloody struggles one against the other, had tried to raise themselves little by little above the level of wild beasts. Since the war had come, since it had been forced upon us by the enemy—who, after an elaborate preparation, had chosen his own time—we wished, while engaging in it and carrying it through, to minimize its calamities as much as possible, by strictly observing the articles of agreement by which the nations had mutually bound themselves to consider the wounded as _res sacra_, not to maltreat civilians, not to bombard open towns, and so on. We have paid dearly for the chivalrous illusions which we had at the outset.

Let me give you two examples of the state of mind which prevailed in France at that moment.

The Boches—I say it not to justify but to explain their acts of murder—pretended, as you remind us in the course of your book, that civilians had fired upon them. It is a cynical falsehood. Since the beginning of August, 1914, I have administered the Department of Meurthe et Moselle, and I have made a searching investigation in all my communes. I affirm that no non-combatant, no man not regularly classed in the ranks of the army, has ever fired on the enemy. Never? I exaggerate. There has been one case. One day, in 1914, a German aeroplane flew over the plains of Lorraine; it dropped murderous bombs at random on the peaceable population of certain rural communes. On seeing this, the Mayor of one of these communes, close to Nancy, lost his sangfroid, armed himself with an old fowling-piece, and began to fire at the aeroplane. There was certainly some excuse for him, was there not? But I considered that he was at fault. Assassins must not be killed by passers-by; it is the business of the gendarmes to arrest them. In war it is the army’s business—it is strong enough for the job—to punish the enemy. Consequently the action of this mayor called for censure. I did not hesitate to make an order against this honest but over-strung magistrate; in virtue of the powers conferred upon me by the law, I suspended him from his functions. This order was universally approved; it interpreted the unanimous wish of all civilians not to provide any pretext for German brutality.

I take another example of our standard of behaviour from the story of Badonviller. This Lorraine commune was one of the first that suffered the horrors of Kultur. It was entered by the Germans at the beginning of the month of August. Because our troops had met them with a stubborn resistance which cost them dear, they were mad with fury when they entered the little town; it was there that they first used the special implements with which their soldiers had been supplied for methodical and “scientific” house-burnings; they destroyed, with fire applied by hand, half the commune. That was not enough for them; they shot down the people in the streets like rabbits, they killed women and children on the threshold of their doors. The mayor, M. Benoit, a much-respected business man, saw his young wife assassinated before his eyes; he saw his house burnt, and was himself the object of the worst forms of violence. These scenes of outrage only lasted for a short time. On the next day the French troops retook Badonviller by a vigorous effort, and, after a hot pursuit, made a number of prisoners. These prisoners were brought to the square in front of the Mairie. They were some of the brute-beasts with human faces, who, a few hours before, had burnt the commune and bathed it in blood. The houses to which they had set fire were still smoking. The bodies of their innocent victims were not yet buried. A crowd of infuriated peasants gathered round them, shaking their fists at them, and abusing them with angry cries. The situation was becoming awkward, when the mayor arrived. M. Benoit had just seen his poor wife placed in her coffin. He had no longer a home. His house was a mass of smoking ashes. He was ruined. His heart was broken. He drew near the scene. The prisoners thought that their last hour had come, and turned livid with terror.

But M. Benoit is a Mayor of France. He knows the traditions of our country. He respects the law. He forced a way through the crowd. With a single gesture he called for silence. He reminded them that these men were prisoners, that prisoners were protected by international agreements, and that no one had a right to lay a finger on them—no, not even on them. He put himself in front of them. He made a rampart for them with his body. He declared that while he lived not a hair of the head of one of these prisoners of war should be touched. And the peasants, mastered by their sense of duty, stifled their cries of anger, unclenched their fists, and respectfully moved away and went into their houses.

The Bavarian assassins were decorated by the Kaiser, for their crimes, with the Iron Cross. The French Government at my request granted to M. Benoit the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and a few days later I presented it to him with my own hands.

Those are the principles with which, on one side and the other, we began the war, and these two incidents, taken at random from a hundred of the same kind, seem to me to show accurately the difference between the two methods, the difference between the Civilization on which Thomas Mann heaps his contempt, jeering at its “reason, its gentleness, and its emancipation,” and the Kultur which, according to him, is “above morality, reason, and science,” the Kultur which he hails as “die Subliemerung des Dämonischen.”

* * * * *

Have these principles been modified? Those of the Germans, no; our own, yes. The Germans have systematically continued the practical application of their gentlemanly instincts. After the crimes of Lorraine and Belgium came the unpardonable outrage of the _Lusitania_, followed by others so numerous and so varied that I must give up the idea of finding room for them in this letter; a whole volume would not be long enough to give a full list of them.

If the principles of the Boches have remained the same and have incited them every day to the commission of fresh outrages, ours—I say it frankly—have changed.

We want three things—to-day reprisals of defence—to-morrow compensations—finally, to save the future, punishment.

Reprisals? Most certainly. There are two kinds of reprisals, those of vengeance and those of defence. The first I reject; the second I demand. I should be proud if French soldiers and their brothers-in-arms kept their hands clean when they penetrate into Germany. I swear that no violence could have stained them if the Boches had not been piling up provocations for months and months. In any case I am quite sure that if, contrary to my hopes, they were to give way to these provocations, our dear soldiers would never commit a tenth part of the acts of violence which have been suffered by our unhappy populations; they would dismiss with horror the idea of setting fire to ambulances, or of massacring old men and women and children.

But there are reprisals of defence. These I hope for, and our Nations demand them. We have got to defend our soldiers and our civilians. To reply, in the trenches, to grenades with oranges, to gases which kill with gases which make the eyes smart, to liquid fire with cold water, would not only be idiotic, it would be criminal. In battle, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Abel must fight with the same weapons as Cain. However varied the forms of human folly may be, I imagine that no one will dispute this necessity. If, however, any soft-hearted philanthropists raise a protest and entreat us not to answer gas by gas and fire by fire, it would be easy to form a few gangs of them and place them in the front-line trenches, with instructions, when asphyxiating gases of the enemy arrive, to disperse the clouds by blowing upon them, and to put out the flames of the liquid fire with their gentle tears.

We have also got to defend civilians. Intoxicated by their philosophers the Boches can only understand the arguments of force. They laugh ponderously at our protests in the name of right. Blows are the only things that they can feel. We ought thoroughly to convince them that every time that one of our open towns is bombarded by cannon, by Zeppelin, or by aeroplanes, one of our aeroplanes, while we are waiting for something better, will bombard one of theirs. An excellent effect was produced by the operations at Carlsruhe and Stuttgart. Let us equip hundreds of aeroplanes for purposes of bombardment, and let each outrage of the Boches on our towns be followed by an immediate riposte, frankly announced in the newspapers to the whole world. Is that cruelty? I would accept that reproach from no one. I have immense pity in my heart—pity for our children and our women who are the victims of German assassins, pity for our children and our women whom it is our duty to protect, and whom we can protect in this way only! That, I repeat, is not a reprisal of vengeance, but a reprisal of defence. The people who protest against the use of such means ought not to remain far from the danger zone. Let them go—not alone, that would be too easy, but with their family, their old mothers, their wives, their children—let them go and take up their abode in the open towns which serve most often as targets, to Reims, to Pont-à-Mousson, to Nancy, to Dunkerque; let them go and live there in the houses of the poor, which are crushed like walnuts by big shells and split from top to bottom by Zeppelin bombs, or else let them take a berth for a few months on a transatlantic steamer; when they have been there long enough, when they have observed at close quarters the acts of the Boches, when they have seen some loved one fall by their side, when they have felt on their own brow the wind of a Camarde, then, if they still demand that the Allies should not engage in reprisals of defence, their advice, though it may not be wise, will at least be worthy of respect. In the meantime, in the name of the women and children already assassinated, and that the list of these pitiable victims may not be lengthened, those people had better be silent who, from the asylum of their safe and comfortable homes, invite us to reply to crime by diplomatic notes or by prayers, and to counter actions that kill with words that lull to sleep!

I said that from to-day our wish is for reprisals of defence, and that to-morrow we shall want compensation and punishment.

One word only about _compensations_. It is not enough that everything which has been destroyed and can be paid for shall be paid for. Those who have wilfully set our villages on fire must be compelled to rebuild them; we shall, I hope, requisition in “Boche”-land enough manual labour to repair all that can be repaired of their crimes. When they have not destroyed our manufactories they have pillaged them, stealing raw material, manufactured articles, and machines; I sincerely hope that they will be compelled to restore our plant to us in good condition, that in case of need, while we wait for better, we shall not hesitate to take theirs in place of our own, which they have no doubt broken up, and that we shall have the sense to impose upon them a whole category of economic measures calculated to restore those of our industries which they have deliberately ruined.

And I imagine also that in the domain of art, compensations will be put down in settling up the accounts. We will leave them all their own public monuments, in the clumsy bad taste of which they take such pride. But there are in the German and Austrian museums masterpieces of art—not of German art, but of Flemish or Italian, Dutch or French, Russian or English. The Boches will entertain profound respect for us if we collect all these works, which in any case they do not understand, and form with them in beautiful maltreated towns such as Louvain, Ypres, Reims, and Arras, museums of the Great War. If we do not act in this way they would feel no gratitude towards us, but would treat us simply as imbeciles, and for once I should be of their opinion.

But to come to a graver question: the necessity for punishment. It will not be enough that the material and economic damage which they have done shall be repaired, it will not be enough that the Monster which has steeped the whole world in blood shall be struck down and rent limb from limb, and placed for ever in a condition in which it can do no harm. The outraged conscience of humanity demands personal decrees against the assassins.

Ah! If the sponge were to be passed over all the crimes that have been committed, over all the outrages and all the violations of the rights of nations, if this war were to be ended by an ordinary treaty modifying the frontiers, and stipulating for financial and economic conditions and nothing more, and if, after this treaty, wearied of hating and giving in to a great craving for moral peace, the hostile Nations were to blot from their memories the recollection of the Evil accomplished, and were to throw themselves into each other’s arms and exchange a mighty kiss of concord and of love—let us take every precaution against such a possibility! A misfortune would overtake humanity far more serious for it than all the catastrophes which it has suffered in the course of its sorrowful history. I say that if we do not strike at the head of the most exalted, the most powerful among the responsible authors of these crimes—those who let loose the war, those who gloried in tearing up treaties like “scraps of paper,” those who ordered the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the _Persia_ and their thousands of passengers, those who first bombarded open towns, those who for the first time launched aeroplanes and Zeppelins over our industrial cities on both sides of the Channel (to speak only of our own front) those who burnt Louvain, who murdered the Cathedral of Reims, those who gave the order for the first acts of incendiarism and pillage and assassination, those who splashed the statue of Charity with the noble blood of Miss Cavell, those who started the _régime_ of asphyxiating gases and liquid fire, and all who have placed themselves beyond the pale of the law, and of humanity—if the sword of the law does not fall on all these men personally, this is what will happen: man will no longer believe in honour, he will no longer believe in right, he will no longer believe in justice, he will no longer believe in anything. His faith in a better future will vanish and be dispelled for ever, along with the beautiful dreams which—whether they were realizable or not—were our joy, our hope, and our pride, in which we were constructing, on the foundation of Law and of Right, better national and international organizations than those by which man up to our day had protected himself. If the criminals do not bear the punishment of their crimes the principle of responsibility gives way, carrying with it all our codes and laws. It will remain a settled principle that only Force counts. The force of Germany will not have triumphed this time, but its hateful doctrine will remain all-powerful, and that would be for humanity a terrible moral relapse.

The Germans have taught us to hate—and perhaps that is their greatest moral crime. To this new passion, but lately still unknown to us, we had for long ages closed our hearts. We should not have allowed it to enter them, if, whether as conquerors or conquered, we had been challenged by our enemies to an honourable combat. Under the repeated blows of their outrages our hearts ended by giving it admittance; hatred has entered into them, it has settled itself there, and taken up its abode. It will stay there till justice has been done. Our soul will not be freed from hatred till the day when the expiation of the chief culprits has been carried out. Then, and then only, humanity will be able to resume its enthusiastic and yet halting march in the direction of Progress.

These are not the extravagant visions of a solitary dreamer. You recognize these sentiments, friend Campbell. You have felt how strongly they were imposed upon upright consciences, however enamoured of the ideal, by the stern contact with realities. No one can remain a stranger to that fact who has made the melancholy pilgrimages which you have in the murdered lands,—for example, in the wasted fields of Lorraine or Champagne—if, in the cities of Reims or of Pont-à-Mousson, in Sermaize or Clermont en Argonne, in Nomeny or Gerbéviller—and all the other places, alas! where innocent blood has flowed—he can hear and remember with a brotherly heart the cries of the martyrs, as he passes through the midst of the ruins.

* * * * *

Is it impossible to realize these projects? Is it an idle fancy to talk of such conditions and to demand such punishments, while the enemy is still burrowing in trenches dug in our soil? No! No! Whatever trials we may still have to submit to, whatever long sufferings we may still have to endure, in France, as in England, in Russia, in Italy, in Belgium, and in Servia, we all know perfectly well—as the rest of the world is beginning to know—that absolute victory, with the conditions dictated by us, will without any doubt be the prize of our efforts, if we pursue those efforts with enough resolution and method, that is to say if we are determined to have it, if our determination and our actions are in proportion to the importance of the object we have to attain. And you, friend Campbell, will have the honour of being of the number of those who, from the first hour, have had a clear vision of the future, of those who have taught your noble Nation to _understand_ and to be _determined_. And so with all my heart I give you my hand.

Yours truly, LÉON MIRMAN.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND DECCLES.

Telegrams: 41 and 43 Maddox Street, “Scholarly, Reg. London.” Bond Street, London, W. Telephone: _October, 1916._ No. 1883 Mayfair.

Mr. Edward Arnold’s

AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1916.

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CHAPTERS FROM MY OFFICIAL LIFE.

By SIR C. RIVERS WILSON, G.C.M.G.

Edited by E. MACALISTER.

_One Volume. With Portraits. Demy 8vo. Cloth._ =12s. 6d. net.=

The autobiography of Sir C. Rivers Wilson covers a long period and touches on many interesting historical events. Sir Rivers, who was born in 1831 and died in 1916, passed the greater part of his life in the service of his country. While still a young man at the Treasury, he was for some time private secretary to Mr. Disraeli, of whom he has some good stories to tell, and he has much to say about the celebrated “Bob Lowe,” whose notorious “match tax” has lately been passed by Mr. McKenna. For over twenty years Sir Rivers Wilson was the head of the National Debt Office, but his most interesting work during that time was when he was specially detached for financial diplomacy in Egypt, and his account of his difficult dealings with the Khedive Ismail Pasha brings much that is new to light. It is particularly relevant at the present time, when Prince Hussein, the son of Ismail Pasha, has been established as independent Sultan of Egypt under the British Protectorate. Sir Rivers gives us most entertaining chapters on Ferdinand de Lesseps, le Grand Français, whom he knew intimately, and on many other Parisian celebrities of later days. At the age of sixty-four Sir Rivers became connected with America, first through C. P. Huntington and the Central Pacific Railway, then as President of the Grand Trunk Railway, which he raised to a position of great prosperity. All this he tells in a modest and unassuming way, with many touches of humour. His style is “chatty” and genial, and it is obvious that Sir Rivers Wilson was a man of few enemies and many friends.

------------------------------------

LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

FROM SAIL TO STEAM.

NAVAL RECOLLECTIONS, 1878-1905.

By ADMIRAL C. C. PENROSE FITZGERALD,

AUTHOR OF “MEMORIES OF THE SEA.”

_With numerous full-page Illustrations. Demy 8vo._ =12s. 6d. net.=

Admiral Fitzgerald’s life has been an exceptionally full and varied one, and whether he was afloat or ashore, engaged in his professional duties, or enjoying a strenuous sporting holiday, he is always interesting, because whatever he turned his hand to—work or play—he did it with all his might. Of the active work at sea which is comprised in the present volume, perhaps the most remarkable portion is the cruise with the squadron which accompanied the _Bacchante_ when King George and his brother made their memorable voyage—not round the world. If any tour was likely to be carried out according to prearranged plans, one would have said it was this one, and the story of the vicissitudes in its progress and programme is curious and highly instructive.

On shore, Admiral Fitzgerald was at one time in charge of the Royal Naval College, and for two years Superintendent of the Pembroke Dockyard, entertaining in the latter capacity a number of distinguished visitors, among them the ill-fated Admiral Rosjesvenski. He was more than once stationed in the Mediterranean in circumstances which enabled him to take ample advantage of the wonderful sporting opportunities then available. Among his most attractive chapters are those which describe the shooting—woodcock, duck, wild-boar, etc.—in Albania, Syria, and Turkey; and he has a rare knack of conveying much of his own whole-hearted enjoyment to the reader.

He is almost apologetic with regard to his passion for sport, and, indeed, admits that in the eighties the navy suffered somewhat from a tendency to rest on its laurels and take things easily. Much more did this tendency affect those in charge of affairs at home, the politicians—a class whom the Admiral, quite irrespective of party, holds in very low esteem. The remaining principal section of the book describes the stages in the struggle against this tendency, initiated by Admiral Fitzgerald and a few other far-seeing men, fortunately not too late.

THE REMINISCENCES OF THE RT. HON. LORD O’BRIEN,

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF IRELAND.

Edited by his Daughter, Hon. GEORGINA O’BRIEN.

_One Volume. With Portrait. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

Not many bodies of men have a more distinguished tradition than the Irish Bench and Bar, and among the legal luminaries of Ireland in recent years there was no more representative and characteristic figure than Lord Chief Justice O’Brien. After his retirement he occupied his leisure in putting together his reminiscences. They were unfortunately left unfinished at his death, but have been edited and completed with the fullest knowledge and sympathy by his daughter, the Hon. Georgina O’Brien.

He has much to say of sport, of youthful frolics, and of prominent figures in the social life of Dublin, but the main interest of the book lies, as was to be expected, in his professional recollections. These include the trials arising out of the Phœnix Park murders, and those which followed another no less sombre tragedy—the Maamstrasna massacre; but for the most part they are of a more cheerful character. The impress of a vigorous and intensely independent personality is stamped on every page, and few people could attain to the detached serenity with which he records the bestowal of the once well-known sobriquet of “Peter the Packer.”

A NEW NOVEL BY FORREST REID.

THE SPRING SONG,

By FORREST REID.

AUTHOR OF “AT THE DOOR OF THE GATE,” “THE GENTLE LOVER,” ETC.

_One Volume. Crown 8vo._ =6s.=

Griffith Weston is a child with a temperament. With his rather ordinary but quite nice relations he lives in the ordinary world on the usual footing. On his own account he lives another life in a world of his own. Hence minor escapades which alarm and exasperate his governess and his kind but conventional aunt, and which are told with an insight and sympathy that invest their details with indefinable charm. Into this happy young life enters the sinister figure of the Parish Organist. In him, too, ordinary folk see nothing but a queer-tempered old musician, but he, like Grif, lives in a world of his own, though a very different one, it would seem, from that of the gentle, dreamy boy. The tragedy which ensues may be baldly summarized as follows: The Organist, a homicidal maniac, supposed to be cured, gives form and substance to Grif’s other world, and instils into his mind, enfeebled by illness, the suggestion that in it there is another boy, summoning him with a call which is not to be resisted. The maniac’s lurid death fails to break the spell which grips the child, and the relief of telling his story to an understanding listener comes too late. To the real nature of the tragedy Grif’s own people remain blind to the end. The doctor knows more, but he only sees when he has been enlightened by the third of the outstanding figures in the story, a friend of Grif’s elder brother, and a delightful study of the school-boy turned Sherlock Holmes. These two are helplessly aware that the sensitive child has been scared into his grave. Does this exhaust the matter, or is there still more behind? Throughout the story the reader is haunted by a feeling that there is another, more elemental, world, peopled by powers both kindly and malign, with which both the dreamy boy and the mad musician have kinship, and by virtue of which the currents of their lives are intermingled. It is this sense of mystery and doom which gives the book its glamour and distinction, and provides scope for Mr. Forrest Reid’s elusive and delicate art.

ARBOREAL MAN.

By F. WOOD JONES, M.B., D.Sc.,

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (LONDON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN).

_With 81 Illustrations and Diagrams. One Volume. Demy 8vo._ =8s. 6d. net.=

Put as concisely as possible, the theme of Dr. Wood Jones’s book is a demonstration of the fact that Man, the supreme product of Evolution, could only have been developed from animals which had their homes and spent much of their lives in trees; the main point in the argument being that the descendants of primitive animals living on the ground were inevitably doomed to become quadrupeds, and so missed the chance of acquiring the upright posture which is one of Man’s distinctive attributes, at the same time paying for more immediate advantages by losing for ever that invaluable organ, the hand.

Stated in these crude terms, the matter might at first sight seem to be only a chapter, though an important one, in the story of Human Evolution; but before the reader has progressed very far, he will begin to realize that the arboreal habitat is not merely one of the conditions, but the central and dominating factor in the whole process. Not that living in trees was in itself sufficient to determine the line of progress in an upward direction. Many classes of animals lived, as many still live, mainly in trees. Mr. Wood Jones, reasoning on lines which would delight the heart of M. Henri Bergson, shows how and why only one of these classes continuously achieved “the successful minimum of specialization,” and moved slowly but surely in a direction which ended in Man, and not in a Lemur or a Sloth.

There is much more in the matter than this, but the whole argument of the book does not admit of being summarized briefly. Much of it is based on data supplied by Comparative Anatomy, of a character which only experts can appreciate, but the author has skilfully and considerately marshalled his material in such a way that the successive steps in the development which he proves to have taken place can be followed and understood by any intelligent layman.

LOVE, WORSHIP, AND DEATH.

SOME RENDERINGS FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.

By SIR RENNELL RODD, G.C.M.G.,

BRITISH AMBASSADOR AT ROME.

AUTHOR OF “BALLADS OF THE FLEET,” “THE VIOLET CROWN,” ETC.

_Small Crown 8vo._ =2s. 6d. net.=

The poems of which some renderings are here offered to those who cannot read the originals cover a period of about a thousand years. The poets of the _elegy_ and the _melos_ appear in due succession after those of the _epic_. A little gem from Mimnermus (seventh century B.C.) is the first in the collection, and some lines from Macedonius (sixth century A.D.) mark the close. The interpretation of these lyrics has been the author’s sole and grateful distraction during a period of ceaseless work and intense anxiety in the tragic years of 1914 and 1915—“yet another proof,” says a review in the _Morning Post_, “of the worth of true poetry as manna for the soul in these dread and inexorable days.... The little book is like a vase of rose-leaves, faded yet fragrant, which, as you pour them out, whisper sympathy from the dead to the living.”

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

BALLADS OF THE FLEET.

By SIR RENNELL RODD.

_A New Popular Edition. Crown 8vo._ =2s. 6d. net.=

In this edition a new poem, entitled “Inter Arma Silent,” is printed as an introduction, and all matter has been eliminated which has not strictly to do with the sea. The volume appears during a struggle even more stern and momentous than that recorded in the Ballads. But the chivalries of the sea and the test of high endurance are the same as in the days of our fathers, and while the Island race endures the spirit of Drake, who sleeps “’neath some great wave,” will never call to them in vain.

THE SOUL AND ITS STORY.

By NORMAN PEARSON,

AUTHOR OF “SOME PROBLEMS OF EXISTENCE,” ETC.

_One Volume. Demy 8vo. Cloth._ =10s. 6d. net.=

The underlying principle of this book is that the Soul, no less than the body, is a product of evolution, though, unlike the body which perishes, it has a destiny which will endure. The Soul, which has its origin in the dim sentience which accompanies even the lowest forms of life, is identified with the human Self-consciousness. It is carefully distinguished, however, from the Self, which is only one of its partial manifestations. The theory of Materialism is examined and found wanting, and the nature of Matter itself investigated. Following upon this, the book deals with the conditions necessary for the appearance of life and the mode of its appearance. A chapter is devoted to the controversy of the Spontaneous Generation of Life, and the curious process of Heterogenesis. The relations of physical to mental structure are dwelt upon, and the intimate connections of the two orders of development. The difficulties which beset the transition from a subhuman to a human consciousness, and the activities of consciousnesses in a subhuman condition, are discussed at some length. Speech is the distinctive mark of man, but it is shown to be connected with anatomical development and motor activity. Considerable attention is given to Weismann’s theory of the non-transmission by heredity of acquired characters, and the theory in its extreme form is rejected as improbable and unproved. This disposes of one of the chief obstacles raised by the Weismann school to the permanent value of education and the independent evolution of the Soul. There are chapters dealing with Personal Identity, the Relation of the Soul to the Self, the Unity of the Soul—in spite of the marvellous phenomena of multiple personality, and a very interesting discussion on the possible permanency of sex, even in the more spiritual stages of the Soul’s future development. The book concludes with some philosophical disquisitions on the nature and method of creation, and the place of the Soul in, and in relation to, the Universe of which it forms part. The author, regarding evolution as a process whose operation extends both to body and mind, repeatedly turns to the facts of physical evolution for hints towards elucidating the obscure course of mental evolution.

THE DAYS OF ALKIBIADES.

By C. E. ROBINSON, M.A.

With a foreword by Professor C. W. OMAN, Oxford University.

_With 16 full-page Illustrations from the Author’s Sketches._

_One Volume. Crown 8vo._ =5s. net.=

This book gives a series of sketches, in narrative form, illustrating the life of an Athenian citizen during the Peloponnesian War. Nearly all the incidents of both public and private life are covered. Besides witnessing a wedding, a funeral, a dinner-party, and the usual scenes of domestic life in town and country, the reader is introduced to a “Parliament” on the Pnyx, a dramatic festival in the Theatre, a trial in the Law Courts; he may visit a Gymnasium with Sokrates, journey with a pilgrim to Delphi, make the Mystery March to Eleusis, witness a sea-fight with Phormio, and take a hand in the Battle of Delion. A sojourn at Sparta, a celebration of the Olympic Games, and a scene at the Port of Athens, complete the picture.

The thread of the story is woven upon a more or less historical foundation; but the main purpose of the book is rather to give an insight into Athenian manners and customs, and to introduce among the characters types of every sort—the conservative farmer, the smart young aristocrat, the rich merchant, the Spartan, the slave and the philosopher. Local colour is imparted not merely by detail gathered from the Classics and archæological research, but also by descriptions taken from Greek scenery as it is to-day.

In short, the book is intended to give to general readers and to all who are interested in Greece and its history a clear and vivid picture of Hellenic life and culture in the Great Age of Pericles.

LIGHT AND SHADE IN WAR.

By CAPT. MALCOLM ROSS,

WAR CORRESPONDENT WITH THE NEW ZEALAND FORCES. AUTHOR OF “A CLIMBER IN NEW ZEALAND,” ETC.

AND

NOEL ROSS

OF “THE TIMES” LITERARY STAFF (LATELY LANCE-CORPORAL WITH THE ANZACS, AND LIEUT. TERRITORIAL ARTILLERY).

_Crown 8vo. Cloth._ =5s. net.=

The Authors of this book have seen, during the past two years, a great deal of the light and shade of war, the one as a War Correspondent, the other as a soldier, and, latterly, a Correspondent of _The Times_. Some of the war pictures which they give are classics in their way, and such articles as “The Men from the Glen” and “The Last Load” are real literature, and as such worthy of being preserved in the records of the Great War.

Captain Malcolm Ross is well known, not only in his own country, but also in the United Kingdom, as a writer of note, as a keen student of Nature, and as a daring explorer and climber in the Alps of his native land. As a War Correspondent on Gallipoli, in Egypt, and in France, he has earned further distinction by his graphic accounts of events from the battle-fields. His articles have attained a wide popularity in the English and Colonial Press and have in some instances been translated and republished in the French journals.

Mr. Noel Ross was wounded in the historic landing on Gallipoli after having taken part in the fight against the Turks on the Suez Canal. Discharged as unfit for further service, he again enlisted in England, passed a course at Shoeburyness, and received a commission in the Artillery. As a result of continued trouble from shell shock he had to relinquish his commission. After a few weeks he was taken on the staff of _The Times_, for which journal he has done, and is still doing, brilliant work. He is also a contributor to _Punch_.

A FRENCH MOTHER IN WAR TIME.

By MADAME E. DRUMONT.

Translated by MISS G. BEVIR.

_Crown 8vo._ _Cloth._ =3s. 6d. net.=

The writer of this frank and simple narrative is the wife of the famous anti-Semite, but the young airman son, to whom she is devotedly attached, is the child of a first marriage. The volume consists of her diary from July, 1914, to August, 1915. This anxious French mother makes no attempt to represent herself as more heroic than she was or is, and her honesty gives a special value to her picture of the central and really fine figure in the book—that of her son Paul, many of whose letters to her during the war are here given. Among other interesting passages in the book is a description of the scene at the Paris Cabinet Council, when General Gallieni was asked by the Ministry if he would defend Paris.

A YEAR AGO.

BEING “EYE-WITNESS’S” NARRATIVE OF THE WAR FROM MARCH 30TH TO JULY 18TH, 1915.

By LIEUT.-COL. E. D. SWINTON, D.S.O., R.E., and CAPT. THE EARL PERCY.

_Paper Covers_, =2s. net.= _Cloth_, =2s. 6d. net.=

This volume contains the conclusion of the famous “Eye-Witness’s” Narrative from the front, which has now been discontinued. It is reprinted in full from the reports issued by the Press Bureau, and has not hitherto been accessible in a consecutive and complete form. Taken in conjunction with the previous volume published last year by Mr. Edward Arnold, this instalment of “Eye-Witness’s” Narrative provides the most valuable current commentary on the events of the war in Flanders which has yet appeared. As time goes on, its accurate and graphic story of the fighting will inevitably be appealed to as the most reliable evidence of what actually occurred whenever diverse theories are at issue.

THE MOTOR-CAR.

WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO DRIVE IT.

By T. O. A. LAWTON and PROF. R. J. HARVEY GIBSON.

_Limp cloth_, =1s. net.=

This book is written by an expert and a novice, and designed for readers who approach the subject in a condition of complete ignorance; accordingly, nothing is taken for granted. Only rudimentary instruction is imparted, but this is given with absolute simplicity and clearness.

THE MIGRATIONS OF FISH.

By ALEXANDER MEEK, M.Sc.,

PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, ARMSTRONG COLLEGE, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM, AND DIRECTOR OF THE DOVE MARINE LABORATORY, CULLERCOATS.

_With 12 Plates and 128 Diagrams and Maps. xvi + 416 pages._

_Demy 8vo._ =16s. net.=

This work deals with a very interesting and important subject, which appeals no less to the layman than to the scientific student. The habits of sea-fish have only recently begun to be investigated seriously, but their importance in connection with our great fishing industries can hardly be overestimated. A great deal of information relating to the migrations of fish has already been accumulated, but it is scattered in books and periodicals frequently difficult to obtain. The author has aimed at giving a systematic account of the knowledge acquired, developing at the same time a theory of migrations based upon the various stages in the growth of fish in connection with currents. The book contains descriptions of the spawning habits, the eggs and the young, the passive drift to the feeding grounds, and the distribution of the species due to migrations. Practically all families of fish have been considered, but the important food fishes of the Northern Hemisphere have received specially detailed treatment.

THE PRINCIPLES OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND THEIR APPLICATION.

By DR. GISBERT KAPP.

PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM; PAST PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS.

_In Two Volumes, fully illustrated._

_Volume I.: Principles. Demy 8vo._ =15s. net.= [_Ready._

⁂ _Volume II. is almost completed, and will be ready shortly._

=Recent Books on the War.=

_Second Impression now ready._

VERDUN TO THE VOSGES.

IMPRESSIONS OF THE WAR ON THE FORTRESS FRONTIER OF FRANCE.

By GERALD CAMPBELL.

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF “THE TIMES” IN THE EAST OF FRANCE.

_With Illustrations and Maps. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

“If Mr. Gerald Campbell had only written about such experiences as other visitors to the front have had, his remarkably readable book would have deserved high praise on its merits. But he has done much more than that; he has written of experiences which no other English Correspondent has had, and his book must be placed among the few which are really informing, even to those who are familiar with the facts of the war.”—_Spectator._

“A deeply impressive, well-informed book. Mr. Campbell’s book will well repay careful and patient study. It penetrates beneath the surface of the fighting.”—_Daily Telegraph._

“This book contains, so far as we know, the only careful and trustworthy account of those months of intense fighting which has yet been published. Historians will have to turn to these pages for information in regard to many details of the confused events of the early days in this theatre.”—_The Times._

A SURGEON IN KHAKI.

By A. A. MARTIN, M.D., F.R.C.S. ENG.

_Sixth Impression. With Illustrations._ =10s. 6d. net.=

“A superlatively interesting book.”—_Graphic._

“A book full of life and human feeling. ‘A Surgeon in Khaki’ will certainly live as a first-class description of a portion of the great war.”—_Field._

“A book of extraordinary interest. There are many stories, grave and gay, in this book, which should be widely read. It is quite a remarkable book and gives a wonderful vision of what war is.”—_Birmingham Daily Post._

WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS.

By G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.

_Second Impression. Illustrated._ =12s. 6d. net.=

“Mr. Williams has written an excellent book, one of the most vivid and informing accounts that have yet been produced of our men in the field. Like all good correspondents, he has an eye for significant detail. His knowledge of Germany helps him to many instructive comparisons. He is the master of an easy, vigorous style, which occasionally reaches real eloquence. Above all, he has a great gift of enthusiasm. The book is written in a fine spirit, not captious, or egotistical, or flamboyant, but honest and understanding.”—_Spectator._

“This book is no mere compilation of the day-to-day dispatches from Mr. Williams, but a complete study of the army at work and at play, touched by many a scene of pathos, enlivened by many a page of vivacious anecdote, and marked throughout by keen study of all the phases and problems of the war.”—_Daily Mail._

A SURGEON IN BELGIUM.

By H. S. SOUTTAR, F.R.C.S.,

LATE SURGEON-IN-CHIEF OF THE BELGIAN FIELD HOSPITAL.

_Popular Edition, Paper Cover_, =2s. net=. _Cloth_, =2s. 6d. net=.

“In place of the average piece of journalistic hack-work, we have here a live book, a book with a character and a soul, a book whose literary skill and deep human feeling justify the prediction that it will be found among the few elect records which survive their hour, and are still remembered and consulted in years to come.”—_Daily Telegraph._

“Admirably written and readable from beginning to end.”—_Morning Post._

“Mr. Souttar is a surgeon with a gift for vivid writing. His book is a quite fascinating record of his experience.”—_Daily News._

EYE-WITNESS’S NARRATIVE OF THE WAR.

FROM THE MARNE TO NEUVE CHAPELLE, SEPTEMBER, 1914, TO MARCH, 1915.

By LIEUT.-COL. E. D. SWINTON, D.S.O., R.E., and CAPT. THE EARL PERCY.

_312 pages. Crown 8vo. Paper_, =1s. net=. _Cloth_, =2s. net=.

(_Particulars of the later volume will be found on page 9._)

“Pending the time when a full history of the European conflict will be possible, there can be nothing better in the way of a brief general survey of the British operations than ‘Eye-Witness’s Narrative.’”—_Illustrated London News._

A RUSSIAN CLASSIC OF ENTRANCING INTEREST AND GREAT HISTORICAL VALUE.

YEARS OF CHILDHOOD.

By SERGE AKSAKOFF.

Translated, for the first time, from the Russian by J. D. DUFF, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

_Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

“‘Years of Childhood’ becomes the more fascinating the more one reads and thinks about it. Aksakoff read a new and ecstatic meaning into things which are banal and tame to most men and women, and the eager eye of his mind scanned deep into the lives and loves of the people round about him.”—_Morning Post._

“A charming Russian book. At this time when so many translations from the Russian are appearing, well advised and ill advised, it is good to be able to put the hand on one superlatively good book. Here is a refreshment for tired eyes and tired souls. It is put into beautiful English.”—_Country Life._

“English readers may well be grateful to Mr. J. D. Duff for his translation of a very unusual book. He promises us a translation of ‘A Family History,’ which carries on the narrative of Aksakoff’s life and gives some account of his family. In the original the two make one book, and all who read this first instalment will welcome the completion of it.”—_Spectator._

LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

Transcriber’s Note

Hyphens occuring at a line break are either retained or removed based on other occurences in the text. Midline inconsistencies Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

21.10 on our way to the frontier[./,] Replaced.

66.30 instead of in the _r[ó/ô]le_ which French Replaced.

84.8 not a soldier was left in the town[.] Added.

132.24 vont contribuer à l’héro[i/ï]que défen[c/s]e Replaced. de la trouée

181.13 the Sous-Préf[é/e]t, M. Mequillet Replaced.

188.15 comme al[l]ongé> sur la table. Inserted.

188.28 ‘Etude de M. X. Notaire[’]. Added.

189.16 un coup de fe[n/u] Replaced.

238.11 to build a pontoon-bridge[.] Added.

284.5 the main objective of the attack[,/.] Replaced.

304.28 I have taken it from the _Au[-]dessus de la Inserted. Mélée_