There is such literary charm in these simple letters of men who frankly
speak their noble thoughts, that they seem hardly inferior to this
beautiful letter of a young but well-known writer, Louis Madelin, now
Captain Madelin, the historian of Danton and Fouché, and author of the
history of the French Revolution, which has been recently crowned with
the first grand Gobert prize by the French Academy. From Verdun, one of
the gates of France which the Germans are especially anxious to break
down, Captain Madelin writes on the fifth of November, 1914:
"I have with the colors three brothers, two brothers-in-law, three
nephews, eighteen to nineteen years old, and these men are soldiers
of all grades in every rank of the army. They write letters fairly
brimming with courage and zeal. Some of them have been wounded, but
they returned as soon as possible to the firing line. One of my
brothers took some Alsatian villages. He saw the colonel and five out
of six of the captains of his battalion of Chasseurs fall. The youngest
and sole surviving captain, he took command of what was left, led it
from the Vosges to the Marne, enforced marches of forty-five kilometers
a day, keeping its morale intact and losing not a single man. After
fighting like a lion on the battlefield of the Marne he received his
fourth galoon, richly deserved, from the hands of the general of the
army corps. He wrote me a charming letter from the trenches in the
North, in which he said that his soldiers (like all the rest) were
accomplishing prodigies of valor. Another of my brothers, on the
staff of one of the corps, dispatched with a message to a regiment of
cavalry, found the regiment without colonel or major. He put himself at
the head of the troops and hustled a strong force of German infantry.
I have a little devil of a nephew who enlisted at the age of eighteen
and five days later was sent to the front. He fought like a demon with
the light infantry on the Marne and the Aisne, and when his shoulder
was broken by a bursting shell he begged the doctors to heal it quickly
so that he could return to the front. Eighteen years old! There's your
type of volunteer that shows what a generation we have in reserve, and
with what spirit they will march to reconquer lost ground. All my life
long I shall remember the first night of my command of a post in the
Woevre, where I used to walk with my men, the citizens and fathers of
the region, every one of them ready when called on to give his last
drop of blood for the Fatherland."
* * * * *
From Morcourt in the department of the Somme on the seventh of
November, 1914:
"Shall we ever return? What does it matter? We march on. Some fall,
others advance, and the frightful drama continues to unroll before the
eyes of the dazed nations."