LUXEMBURG, Oct. 24.--I have just returned from the German Great
Headquarters in France, the visit terminating abruptly on the fourth
day, when one of the Kaiser's secret field police woke me up at 7
o'clock in the morning and regretfully said that his instructions were
to see that I "did not oversleep" the first train out. The return
journey along one of the German main lines of communication--through
Eastern France, across a corner of Belgium and through Luxemburg--was
full of interest, and confirmed the impression gathered at the centre of
things, the Great Headquarters, that this twentieth century warfare is
in the last analysis a gigantic business proposition which the Board of
Directors (the Great General Staff) and the thirty-six department heads
are conducting with the efficiency of a great American business
corporation.
The west-bound track is a continuous procession of freight trains--fresh
consignments of raw material--men and ammunition--being rushed to the
firing line to be ground out into victories. The first shipment we pass
is an infantry battalion--first ten flatcars loaded with baggage,
ammunition, provision wagons, and field kitchens, the latter already
with fire lighted and soup cooking as the long train steams slowly
along, for the trenches are only fifty miles away, and the Germans make
a point of sending their troops into battle with full stomachs.
After the flatcars come thirty box cars, all decorated with green
branches and scrawled over with chalked witticism at the expense of the
French and Russians. The men cheer as our train passes. A few kilometers
further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each
loaded with a touring car. Then we pass a battery of artillery on
flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight
train--six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires--then a
long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an
empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of
gasoline tank cars, more cheering infantry, more artillery, another
empty hospital train, a pioneer train, a score of flatcars loaded with
long, heavy piles, beams, steel girders, bridge spans, and lumber, then
a passenger train load of German railway officials and servants going to
operate the railways toward the coast, more infantry, food trains,
ammunition trains, train loads of railway tracks already bolted to metal
ties and merely needing to be laid down and pieced together, and so on
in endless succession all through France and through Belgium. The
two-track road, shaky in spots, especially when crossing rivers, is
being worked to capacity, and how well the huge traffic is handled is
surprising even to an American commuter.
Our fast train stops at the mouth of a tunnel, then crawls ahead
charily, for the French, before retreating, dynamited the tunnel. One
track has been cleared, but the going is still bad. To keep it from
being blocked again by falling débris the Germans have dug clean through
the top of the hill, opening up a deep well of light into the tunnel.
Looking up, you see a pioneer company in once cream-colored, now
dirty-colored, fatigue uniform still digging away and terracing the
sides of the big hole to prevent slides. Half an hour later we go slow
again in crossing a new wooden bridge over the Meuse--only one track as
yet. It took the German pioneers nearly a week to build the substitute
for the old steel railway bridge dynamited by the French, whose four
spans lie buckled up in the river. The pioneers are at work driving
piles to carry a second track. The process is interesting. A
forty-man-power pile driver is rigged upon the bow end of a French river
barge with forty soldiers tugging at forty strands of the main rope.
The "gang" foreman, a Captain in field gray, stands on the river bank
and bellows the word of command. Up goes the heavy iron weight; another
command, and down it drops on the pile. It looks like a painfully slow
process, but the bridges are rebuilt just the same.
Further on, a variety of interest is furnished to a squad of French
prisoners being marched along the road. Then a spot of ant-hill-like
activity where a German railway company is at work building a new branch
line, hundreds of them having pickaxes and making the dirt fly. You half
expect to see a swearing Irish foreman. It looks like home--all except
the inevitable officer (distinguished by revolver and field glass)
shouting commands.
The intense activity of the Germans in rebuilding the torn-up railroads
and pushing ahead new strategic lines, is one of the most interesting
features of a tour now in France. I was told that they had pushed the
railroad work so far that they were able to ship men and ammunition
almost up to the fortified trenches. The Germanization of the railroads
here has been completed by the importation of station Superintendents,
station hands, track walkers, &c., from the Fatherland. The stretch over
which we are traveling, for example, is in charge of Bavarians. The
Bavarian and German flags hang out at every French station we pass.
German signs everywhere, even German time. It looks as if they thought
to stay forever.
Now we creep past a long hospital train, full this time, which has
turned out on a siding to give us the right of way--perhaps thirty
all-steel cars--each fitted with two tiers of berths, eight to a side,
sixteen to a car. Every berth is taken. One car is fitted up as an
operating room, but fortunately no one is on the operating table as we
crawl past. Another car is the private office of the surgeon in charge
of the train. He is sitting at a big desk receiving reports form the
orderlies. During the day we pass six of these splendidly appointed new
all-steel hospital trains, all full of wounded. Some of them are able
to sit up in their bunks and take a mild interest in us. Once, by a
queer coincidence, we simultaneously pass the wounded going one way and
cheering fresh troops going the other.
*How the Belgians Fight*
[By a Correspondent of The London Daily News.]
LONDON, Oct. 28.--Writing from an unnamed place in Belgium a
correspondent of The Daily News says:
"The regiment I am concerned with was fifteen days and nights in the
Antwerp trenches in countless engagements. It withdrew at dawn, hoping
then to rest. It marched forty-five kilometers with shouldered rifles.
In the next five days it marched nearly 200 kilometers until it reached
the Nieuport and Dixmude line. By an error of judgment it got two days
of drill and inspection in place of resting, then took its place in the
front line on the Yser to face the most desperate of the German
efforts."
The correspondent quotes a young volunteer in this regiment as follows:
"---- was evacuated by the Germans, and we were sent in at
nightfall. As soon as they saw our lights they began shelling us. We
lost terribly. A number of the men ran up the streets, but we got them
together. I had about twenty and retired in order. We were 600 who went
in, and must have left a third there.
"In the morning we moved down to reinforce a network of trenches on our
bank of the Yser. There was a farm on our right, and some of our men
were firing at it, but the door opened and three officers in Belgian
uniform came out shouting to us to cease fire, so we sent a detachment
to the farm, and they were swept away by machine gun fire from the
windows. No, I don't know what happened afterward about the farm. I lost
sight of it.
"We got into the trenches. They lay longways behind a raised artificial
bank on our side of the river. At the northern end of them were mazes of
cross trenches protecting them in case the Germans got across the bridge
there and started to enfilade us. They were full of water. I was firing
for six hours myself thigh deep in muddy water.
"The Germans got across the bridge. We could not show head or hand over
our bank. German machine guns shot us from crevices in their raised bank
across the river only a few yards away. I was hours and hours dragging
our wounded out of the cross trenches at the northern end of the bank
southward and behind a mound till there was no more room for them there,
and bringing up new men singly and two or three at a time from further
down the trenches to take their places. We lost our officers, but I got
the men to listen to me.
"Some Germans shelled us with a cross fire. They got into the cross
trenches. They fired down our lines from the side. We had to run back. I
was too tired and sleepy to drag my feet. I think I must have fallen
asleep.
"We had an order to advance again. The French were behind us on either
wing in support. I was too tired to get up. Some one kicked me. I looked
up. They were three of my friends, volunteers like myself. We had all
joined together. They apologized and ran forward. They are all wounded
now, but we are all still alive, and I never have been hit once in
thirty-four fights.
"I got up. So did a man lying on the field in front of me. He was shot
through the head and fell back on me. I got up again. A shell burst
beside me and I saw three men, who were running past, just disappear. I
was lying on my face again, and could not lift my head, either through
fear or sleep, I don't know which.
"I found myself running forward again. I called to men lying and running
near and held my revolver at them. We were all charging with bayonets
back at the Germans shooting us from our own trenches under the raised
bank. They did not wait for us. They looked like frightened gray beetles
as they scrambled up away over our bank and down into the river. It was
dusk, but we shot at them over the bank. The water seemed full of them.
We crouched in a big trench in muddy water behind the bank. No, we did
not sleep, but my head and eyes seemed to go to sleep from time to time.
"There were perhaps 200 left of our 600. I think there was one officer
further along, but it was quite dark. Some of the men talked very low.
Then I heard voices whispering and talking near us on the river side of
our bank. It was of earth perhaps five feet high and six feet thick. On
the other side the slope fell steeply to the river.
"I sent a hush along the line. We listened quite silent. I thought I
heard German words, an order passed along on the other side. I crawled
up on to the bank, not showing my head, you know. It was really about
300 Germans who had stayed there on our side under the bank, fearing to
cross the river under our fire. So we stayed all through the night. We
did not sleep nor did they.
"There was just six feet of piled wet earth between us. We only
whispered and could hear them muttering and the sound of their belts
creaking and of water bottles being opened.
"There was a thick gray mist hanging low in the morning. I crawled on to
the bank again, holding my revolver out-stretched. A gray figure stood
up in the mist below close to me. He looked like a British soldier in
khaki. He said: 'It's all right, we are English,' and I said, 'But your
accent isn't,' and I shot him through with my revolver. Some of our men
crept to the bank, but they shot them, and some of theirs climbed over,
but we fired at their heads or arms as they showed only a few feet
away, and they fell backward [Transcriber: original 'bakward'] or on to
us or lay hanging on the bank. Then we all waited.
"As it grew lighter they did not dare move away, and none of us could
get out alive or over the bank to use the bayonet. A few men made holes
in the looser earth, and so we fired at each other through the bank here
and there. Our guns could not help us, and theirs could not shoot
across, for we were all together, and yet we could not get at each
other. Some of the men--theirs and ours--got over lower down, so there
was firing now and then, and two men were killed near me sliding down
into the water in the trenches.
"Somebody threw a cartridge case across close to me. On a paper inside
was scrawled one word: 'Surrender!' We did not know if they wanted to
surrender themselves or wanted us to surrender. They were more numerous,
but we were better placed, so we went on scrapping and crawling around
to get a shot at them.
"Perhaps it was the French who got round at the ends. There was heavy
firing. We heard quite close through the raised bank a few slipping down
on the river edge and water splashing. Some of us pulled ourselves up on
to the bank. I heard our men scrambling up on either side of me, but
could not see them. I think I was too sleepy. I shouted to charge, and
then must have fallen over on my head, rolling down the bank.
"I am on the way down with these wounded. There are fifteen of us unhit
here, but I think we came away just now with nearly a hundred out of our
600 of yesterday."
He was doing gallant Captain's work, a young, slight, ordinary Belgian
trooper, a volunteer private in the ranks, muddy, limping, and
unspeakably tired in muscle and nerve. His story is as nearly as
possible in his own words, interrupted by blanks in his own
consciousness of events--lapses familiar to men whose muscles and nerves
are exhausted, but who must still work on without sleep.
For the following ten hours, without pause, he acted as interpreter and
most capable adviser in getting long trains of stretchers with his
wounded Belgian compatriots down and on to the British hospital ships.
*A Visit to the Firing Line in France*
[By a Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
PARIS, Sept. 30.--In company with several representatives of American
newspapers, I was permitted to pass several days in "the zone of
military activity," on credentials obtained at the personal request of
Ambassador Herrick, that we might describe the destruction caused by the
Germans in unfortified towns. Although I have given a parole to say
nothing concerning the movement of the troops or to mention certain
points that I visited, I am now permitted to send a report of a part of
my experiences.
We crossed the entire battlefield of the Marne, passed directly behind
the lines of the battle still raging on the Aisne, accidentally getting
under fire for an entire afternoon, and lunching in a hotel to the
orchestra of bursting shells, one end of the building being blown away
during the bombardment. We witnessed a battle between an armored French
monoplane and a German battery, and also had the experience of being
accused of being German spies by two men wearing the English uniform,
who, on failing to account for their own German accent, were speedily
taken away under guard with their "numbers up," as the French Commandant
expressed what awaited them.
On account of our exceptional credentials we were able to see more
actual war than many correspondents, who when they learned that permits
to go to the front were not forthcoming, went anyway, usually falling
into the hands of the military authorities before getting far. In fact,
getting arrested has been the chief occupation of the war correspondents
in this war, even our accidental view of the fighting being sufficient
to cause our speedy return to Paris under parole.
Going over the battlefield of the Marne, we found the battle had
followed much the same tactics as a cyclone, in that in some places
nothing, not even the haystacks, had been disturbed, while in others
everything, the villages, roads, and fields, had been utterly devastated
by shells. We talked with the inhabitants of every village and always
heard the same story--that during occupation the Germans, evidently
having been ordered to be on their good behavior after the Belgian
atrocities, had offered little trouble to the civilians, and had
confined their activities to looting and wasting the provisions. Also
that when retreating they had destroyed all the food they were unable to
carry.
Our baptism of fire appropriately came while we were in a church. At
noon of the second day we motored into a deserted village, and were
stopped by a sentry who acknowledged our credentials, but warned us if
we intended to proceed to beware of bullets. But there was not a hostile
sound to alarm us.
As we drove carelessly over the brow of a hill where the road dipped
down a valley into the town, we were in direct line with the German
fire, as great holes in the ground and fallen trees testified. It is a
wonder our big motor car was not an immediate mark. On the way in we
noticed a church steeple shot completely off, so after finding an inn,
where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car
and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The
innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment,
but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger
showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave
when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling of the wind.
"It begins again," our conductor said simply. As the speech ended we
heard a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a shell struck the
far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the shells screaming
overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, glass falling in
fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely from scraps of
masonry.
All my life I had wondered what would be the sensation if I ever were
under fire--would I be afraid? To my intense relief I suddenly became
fatalistic. I was under fire with a vengeance, but instead of being
afraid I kept saying to myself, "Being afraid won't help matters;
besides nothing will happen if we just keep close to the walls and away
from the middle street."
On the way we met two men in English uniform who later denounced us as
spies. We hailed them, and they replied that they had been cut off from
their regiment and were now fighting with the French. Just as luncheon
was announced eight soldiers filed into the hotel, arrested us, and
marched us before the Commandant, who saw that our papers were all
right, but suggested that on account of the dangerous position we leave
as soon as possible. We asked permission to finish our luncheon. It was
lucky that we were arrested then--before the accusation that we were
spies--for when that question arose there was no doubt in the mind of
the Commandant concerning us, so our accusers' charge merely reacted
upon themselves.
During the episode of arrest there was another lull in the bombardment,
which began again as we were seated at luncheon. All through the meal
the shells whistled and screamed overhead, and the dishes rattled
constantly on the table.
When the meal was over the proprietor called us to witness what had
happened to the far wing of the hotel. It was completely demolished.
"Alert" had just been sounded, and the soldiers were running through the
streets. We ran out in time to see a building falling half a block away,
completely filling the street by which we had entered the town an hour
earlier.
In a few minutes we heard the sharp crackle of infantry fire about half
a mile away, and we had a sudden desire to get away before the
automobile retreat was cut off. Just then we heard the sound of an aero
engine overhead. It was flying so low that through a glass we could
easily see the whirring propeller. The machine was mounted with a
rapid-fire gun which was trying to locate the German gunners, who
immediately abandoned the destruction of the town in an attempt to bring
it down. For ten minutes we saw shells bursting all about it. At times
it was lost in smoke, but when the smoke cleared there was the monoplane
still blazing away, always mounting to a higher level, and finally
disappearing toward the French lines.
There was another lull in the cannonade, and we were permitted to pass
down the street near the river, where, by peering around a building, we
could see where the German batteries were secreted in the hills. We were
warned not to get into the street which led to the bridge, as the
Germans raked that street with their fire if a single person appeared.
We then took advantage of a lull in the firing and departed to the south
at seventy miles an hour, in order to beat the shells, if any were aimed
our way as we crossed the rise of the hill.
*Unburied Dead Strew Lorraine*
*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*
DIJON, Sept. 26.--Although great interest is concentrated upon the
northwest side of the line of of battle in France, it must not be
forgotten that the east side is also of high importance. The operation
of the French and German forces along the jagged frontier from north to
south is of vital influence upon the whole field of war, and any great
movement of troops in this direction affects the strategy of the
Generals to command on the furthermost wings.
It was a desire to know something of what had been happening in the east
which led me to travel to the extreme right. Few correspondents have
been in this part of the field since the beginning of the war. It is far
from their own line of communications. For this reason there have been
no detailed narratives of the fighting in Lorraine, and a strange
silence has brooded over those battlefields. The spell of it has been
broken only by official bulletins telling in a line or two the uncertain
result of the ceaseless struggle for mastery.
Here are regiments of young men who have the right already to call
themselves veterans, for they have been fighting continually for six
weeks in innumerable engagements, for the most part unrecorded in
official dispatches. I had seen them answering the call to mobilization,
singing joyously as they marched through the streets. Then they were
smart fellows, clean shaven and spruce in their new blue coats and
scarlet trousers. Now war has put its dirt upon them and seems to have
aged them by fifteen years, leaving its ineffaceable imprint upon their
faces. Their blue coats have changed to a dusty gray, but they are hard
and tough for the most part, and Napoleon himself would not have wished
for better fighting men.
Now for the first time since the beginning of the war there will be a
little respite on the Lorraine frontier, and in the wooded country of
the two lost provinces there will be time to bury the dead which
incumber its fields. Words are utterly inadequate to describe the
horrors of the region to the east of the Meurthe, in and around the
little towns of Blamont, Badonviller, Cirey-les-Forges, Arracourt,
Château-Salins, Morhauge, and Baudrecourt, where for six weeks there has
been incessant fighting. After the heavy battle of Sept. 4, when the
Germans were repulsed with severe losses after an attack in force, both
sides retired for about twelve miles and dug themselves into lines of
trenches which they still hold; but every day since that date there has
been a kind of guerrilla warfare, with small bodies of men fighting from
village to village and from wood to wood, the forces on each side being
scattered over a wide area in advance of their main lines. This method
of warfare is even more terrible than a pitched battle.
"It is absurd to talk of Red Cross work," said one of the French
soldiers who had just come out of the trenches at Lunéville. "It has not
existed as far as many of these fights are concerned How could it? A few
litter-carriers came with us on some of our expeditions, but they were
soon shot down, and after that the wounded just lay where they fell, or
crawled away into the shelter of the woods. Those of us who were unhurt
were not allowed to attend to our wounded comrades; it is against
orders. We have to go on regardless of losses. My own best comrade was
struck down by my side. I heard his cry and saw him lying there with
blood oozing through his coat. My heart wept to leave him. He wanted me
to take his money, but I just kissed his hand and went on, I suppose he
died, for I could not find him when we retreated."
[Illustration: Where the Armies are Contending in Alsace-Lorraine.]
[Illustration: GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS NICHOLAIEVITCH
The Russian Commander-in-Chief. _
(Photo (C) by Underwood & Underwood._)]
[Illustration: GEN. RENNENKAMPF
The Russian General Who Was Removed by the Grand Duke
[Transcriber: photo credit ineligible]]
Another French soldier lay wounded at the edge of a wood ten miles from
Lunéville. When he recovered consciousness he saw there were only dead
and dying men around him. He remained for two days, unable to move his
shattered limbs, and cried out for death to relieve him of his agony. At
night he was numbed by cold; in the day thirst tortured him to the point
of madness. Faint cries and groans came to his ears across the field. It
was on the morning of the third day that French peasants came to rescue
those who still remained alive.
There have been several advances made by the French into Lorraine, and
several retirements. On each occasion men have seen new horrors which
have turned their stomachs. There are woods not far from Nancy from
which there comes a pestilential stench which steals down the wind in
gusts of obscene odor. For three weeks and more dead bodies of Germans
and Frenchmen have lain rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The
peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work
to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with
corruption, where plague and fever find holding ground.
I have said that this warfare on the frontier is pitiless. This is a
general statement of a truth to which there are exceptions. One of these
was a reconciliation on the battlefield between French and German
soldiers who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blamont.
When dawn came they conversed with each other while waiting for death. A
French soldier gave his water bottle to a German officer who was crying
out with thirst. The German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of
the man who had been his enemy. "There will be no war on the other
side," he said.
Another Frenchman, who came from Montmartre, found a Luxembourger lying
within a yard of him whom he had known as a messenger in a big hotel in
Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. "It is
stupid," he said, "this war. You and I were happy when we were good
friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight with each
other?" He died with his arms around the neck of the soldier who told me
the story, unashamed of his own tears.
I could tell a score of tales like this, told to me by men whose eyes
were still haunted by the sight of these things; and perhaps one day
they will be worth telling, so that people of little imagination may
realize the meaning of this war and put away false heroics from their
lips. It is dirty business, with no romance in it for any of those fine
young Frenchmen I have learned to love, who still stay in the trenches
on the frontier lines or march a little way into Lorraine and back
again.
Some of those trenches on either side are still filled with men leaning
forward with their rifles pointing to the enemy--quite dead, in spite of
their lifelike posture.
*Along the German Lines Near Metz*
[Correspondence of The Associated Press.]
WITH THE GERMAN ARMY BEFORE METZ, Sept. 30, (by Courier to Holland and
Mail to New York.)--A five-day trip to the front has taken the
correspondent of The Associated Press through the German fortresses of
Mainz, Saarbrücken, and Metz, through the frontier regions between Metz
and the French fortress line from Verdun to Toul, into the actual
battery positions from which German and Austrian heavy artillery were
pounding their eight and twelve-inch shells into the French barrier
forts and into the ranks of the French field army which has replaced the
crumbling fortifications of steel and cement with ramparts of flesh and
blood.
Impressions at the end are those of some great industrial undertaking
with powerful machinery in full operation and endless supply trains
bringing up the raw materials for manufacture rather than of war as
pictured.
From a point of observation on a hillside above St. Mihiel the great
battlefield on which a German army endeavoring to break through the line
of barrier forts between Verdun and Toul and the opposing French forces
could be surveyed in its entirety. In the foreground lay the level
valley of the Meuse, with the towns of St. Mihiel and Banoncour nestling
upon the green landscape. Beyond and behind the valley rose a tier of
hills on which the French at this writing obstinately hold an intrenched
position, checking the point of the German wedge, while the French
forces from north and south beat upon the sides of the triangle, trying
to force it back across the Meuse and out from the vitals of the French
fortress line.
Bursting shells threw up their columns of white or black fog around the
edge of the panorama. Cloudlets of white smoke here and there showed
where a position was being brought under shrapnel fire. An occasional
aeroplane could be picked out hovering over the lines, but the infantry
and the field battery positions could not be discerned even with a
high-power field glass, so cleverly had the armies taken cover. The
uninitiated observer would have believed this a deserted landscape
rather than the scene of a great battle, which, if successful for the
Germans, would force the main French Army to retreat from its intrenched
positions along the Aisne River.
About three miles away, across the Meuse, a quadrangular mound of black,
plowed-up earth on the hillside marked the location of Fort Les
Paroches, which had been silenced by the German mortars the night
before. Fort Camp des Romains, so named because the Roman legions had
centuries ago selected this site for a strategic encampment, had been
stormed by Bavarian infantry two days earlier after its heavy guns had
been put out of action, and artillery officers said that Fort Lionville,
fifteen miles to the south and out of the range of vision, was then
practically silenced, only one of its armored turrets continuing to
answer the bombardment.
The correspondent had spent the previous night at the fortress town of
Metz, sleeping under the same roof with Prince Oscar of Prussia,
invalided from the field in a state of physical breakdown; Prince
William of Hohenzollern, father-in-law of ex-King Manuel, and other
officers, either watching or engaged in the operations in the field, and
had traveled by automobile to the battlefront thirty-five miles to the
west. For the first part of the distance the road led through the hills
on which are located the chain of forts comprising the fortress of Metz;
but, although the General Staff officer in the car pointed now and then
to a hill as the site of this or that fort, traces of the fortifications
could only occasionally be made out. Usually they were so skillfully
masked and concealed by woods or blended with the hillsides that nothing
out of the ordinary was apparent, in striking contrast to the exposed
position of the forts at the recently visited fortress of Liége, which
advertised their presence from the sky line of the encompassing hills
and fairly invited bombardment.
The country as far as the frontier town of Gorze seemed bathed in
absolute peace. No troops were seen, rarely were automobiles of the
General Staff encountered, and men and women were working in the field
and vineyards as if war were a thousand miles away instead of only next
door.
Beyond Gorze, however, the road leading southwest through Chambley and
St. Benoît Vigneuilles to St. Mihiel was crowded with long columns of
wagons and automobile trucks bearing reserve ammunition, provisions, and
supplies to the front, or returning empty for new loads to the unnamed
railroad base in the rear. Strikingly good march discipline was
observed, part of the road being always left free from the passage of
staff automobiles or marching troops. Life seemed most comfortable for
the drivers and escorts, as the army in advance had been so long in
position, and its railroad base was so near, that supplying it involved
none of the sleepless nights and days and almost superhuman exertions
falling to the lot of the train in the flying march of the German armies
toward Paris.
A few miles beyond Gorze the French frontier was passed, and from this
point on the countryside, with its deserted farms, rotting shocks of
wheat, and uncut fields of grain, trampled down by infantry and scarred
with trenches, excavations for batteries, and pits caused by exploding
shells, showed war's devastating heel prints.
Main army headquarters, the residence and working quarters of a
commanding General whose name may not yet be mentioned, were in Château
Chambley, a fine French country house. In the château the commanding
General made all as comfortable as in his own home. Telegraph wires led
to it from various directions, a small headquarters guard lounged on the
grass under the trees, a dozen automobiles and motor cycles were at
hand, and grooms were leading about the chargers of the General and his
staff. At St. Benoît, five miles further on, a subordinate headquarters
was encountered, again in a château belonging to a rich French resident.
The Continental soldier leaves tents to the American Army and quarters
himself, whenever it is possible, comfortably in houses, wasting no
energy in transporting and setting up tented cities for officers and
men. No matter how fast or how far a German army moves, a completely
equipped telegraph office is ready for the army commander five minutes
after headquarters have been established.
At St. Benoît a party of some 300 French prisoners was encountered,
waiting outside headquarters. They were all fine young fellows, in
striking contrast to the elderly reservist type which predominates in
the German prison camps. They were evidently picked troops of the line,
and were treated almost with deference by their guards, a detachment of
bearded Landwehr men from South Germany. They were the survivors of the
garrison of Fort Camp des Romains, who had put up such a desperate and
spirited defense as to win the whole-hearted admiration and respect of
the German officers and men. Their armored turrets and cemented
bastions, although constructed after the best rules of fortification of
a few years ago, had been battered about their ears in an unexpectedly
short time by German and Austrian siege artillery. Their guns were
silenced, and trenches were pushed up by an overwhelming force of
pioneers and infantry to within five yards of their works before they
retreated from the advanced intrenchments to the casemates of the fort.
Here they maintained a stout resistance, and refused every summons to
surrender. Hand grenades were brought up, bound to a backing of boards,
and exploded against the openings into the casemates, filling these with
showers of steel splinters. Pioneers, creeping up to the dead angle of
the casemates, where the fire of the defenders could not reach them,
directed smoke tubes and stinkpots against apertures in the citadel,
filling the rooms with suffocating smoke and gases.
"Have you had enough?" the defenders were asked, after the first smoke
treatment.
"No!" was the defiant answer.
The operation was repeated a second and third time, the response to the
demand for surrender each time growing weaker, until finally the
defenders were no longer able to raise their rifles, and the fort was
taken. When the survivors of the plucky garrison were able to march out,
revived by the fresh air, they found their late opponents presenting
arms before them in recognition of their gallant stand. They were
granted the most honorable terms of surrender, their officers were
allowed to retain their swords, and on their march toward an honorable
captivity they were everywhere greeted with expressions of respect and
admiration.
The headquarters guard here was composed of a company of infantry. The
company's field kitchen, the soup-boiler and oven on wheels, which the
German army copied from the Russians and which the soldiers facetiously
and affectionately name their "goulash cannon," had that day, the
Captain said, fed 970 men, soldiers of his own and passing companies,
headquarters attachés, wounded men and the detachment of French
prisoners.
Experienced German officers rank the field kitchens, with the sturdy
legs of the infantry, the German heavy artillery and the aviation corps,
as the most important factors in the showing made by the German armies.
Beyond St. Benoît the Côte Lorraine, a range of wooded hills running
north and south along the east bank of the Meuse, rises in steeply
terraced slopes several hundred feet from the frontier plain,
interposing a natural rampart between Germany and the French line of
fortresses beyond the Meuse. The French had fortified these slopes with
successive rows of trenches, permitting line above line of infantry to
fire against an advancing enemy. For days a desperate struggle was waged
for the possession of the heights, which was imperative for the German
campaign against the line of fortresses.
Germans do not mention the extent of their losses in any particular
action, but it was admitted and evident that it had cost a high price to
storm those steep slopes and win a position in the woods crowning the
range from which their batteries could be directed against the French
forts. Vigneuilles, a village at the foot of the hillside, shot into
ruins by artillery and with every standing bit of house wall scarred
with bullet marks from the hand-to-hand conflicts which had swayed to
and fro in its streets, was typical of all the little stone-built towns
serving as outposts to this natural fortress which had been the scene of
imbittered attacks and counter-attacks before the German troops could
fight their way up the hillsides.
The combat is still raging on this day from north and south against the
segment of this range captured by the Germans. The French, massing their
troops by forest paths from Verdun and Toul, throw them against the
Germans in desperate endeavors to break the lines which protect the
sites for the German siege artillery, heavy mortars of 8-1/4 and 16-1/2
inch calibre and an intermediate sized type, and for the Austrian
automobile batteries of 12-inch siege guns.
The correspondent had no opportunity to inspect at close range the
16-1/2-inch guns, the "growlers" of Liége, Namur, and other fortresses,
which Krupp and the German Army uncovered as the surprise of this war.
They could be heard even from Metz speaking at five-minute intervals. A
battery of them, dug into the ground so that only the gun muzzles
projected above the pits, was observed in action at a distance of about
a half mile, the flash of flames being visible even at this distance.
Their smaller sisters were less coy. A dismounted battery of the
intermediate calibre, details of which are not available for
publication, was encountered by the roadside, awaiting repairs to the
heavy traction engine in whose train it travels in sections along the
country roads, while the German 8-1/4-inch (21 centimeter) and the
Austrian 12-inch (30.5 centimeter) batteries were seen in action.
The heavy German battery lay snugly hidden in a wood on the rolling
heights of the Côte Lorraine. Better off than the French, whose aviators
had for days repeatedly scrutinized every acre of land in the vicinity
looking for these guns, we had fairly accurate directions how to find
the battery, but even then it required some search and doubling back and
forth before a languid artilleryman lounging by the roadside pointed
with thumb over shoulder toward the hidden guns.
These and the artillerymen were enjoying their midday rest, a pause
which sets in every day with the regularity of the luncheon hour in a
factory. The guns, two in this particular position, stood beneath a
screen of thickly branching trees, the muzzles pointing toward round
openings in this leafy roof. The gun carriages were screened with
branches. The shelter tents of the men and the house for the ammunition
had also been covered with green, and around the position a hedge of
boughs kept off the prying eyes of possible French spies wandering
through the woods.
It was the noon pause, but the Lieutenant in charge of the guns, anxious
to show them off to advantage, volunteered to telephone the battery
commander, in his observation post four miles nearer the enemy, for
permission to fire a shot or two against a village in which French
troops were gathering for the attack. This battery had just finished
with Les Paroches, a French barrier fort across the Meuse, and was now
devoting its attention to such minor tasks. Only forts really counted,
said the Lieutenant, recalling Fort Manonvillers, near Lunéville, the
strongest French barrier fort, which was the battery's first "bag" of
the war. Its capture, thanks to his guns, had cost the German Army only
three lives, those of three pioneers accidentally killed by the fire of
their own men. Now Les Paroches was a heap of crumbled earth and stone.
In default of forts the guns were used against any "worthy target"--a
"worthy target" being defined as a minimum of fifty infantrymen.
At this moment the orderly reported that the battery commander
authorized two shots against the village in question. At command the gun
crew sprang to their posts about the mortar, which was already adjusted
for its target, a little less than six miles away, the gun muzzle
pointing skyward at an angle of about 60 degrees. As the gun was fired
the projectile could be seen and followed in its course for several
hundred feet. The report was not excessively loud.
Before the report died away the crew were busy as bees about the gun.
One man, with the hand elevating gear, rapidly cranked the barrel down
to a level position, ready for loading. A second threw open the breech
and extracted the brass cartridge case, carefully wiping [Transcriber:
original 'wipping'] it out before depositing it among the empties; four
more seized the heavy shell and lifted it to a cradle opposite the
breech; a seventh rammed it home; number eight gingerly inserted the
brass cartridge, half filled with a vaseline-like explosive; the breech
was closed, and the gun pointer rapidly cranked the gun again into
position. In less than thirty seconds the men sprang back from the gun,
again loaded and aimed. A short wait, and the observer from his post
near the village ordered "next shot fifty meters nearer."
The gun pointer made the slight correction necessary, the mortar again
sent its shell purring through the air against the village, which this
time, it was learned, broke into flames, and while the men went back to
their noonday rest, the Lieutenant explained the fine points of his
beloved guns. One man, as had been seen, could manipulate the elevation
gear with one hand easily and quickly; ten of his horses could take the
mortar, weighing eight tons, anywhere; it could fire up to 500 shots per
day. He was proud of the skillful concealment of his guns, which had
been firing for four days from the same position without being
discovered, although French aviators had located all the sister
batteries, all of which had suffered loss from shrapnel fire.
Along the roadside through the Côte Lorraine were here and there graves
with rude crosses and penciled inscriptions. At the western edge of the
forest the battle panorama of the Meuse Valley suddenly opened out, the
hills falling away again steeply to the level valley below. The towns
below--St. Mihiel and Banoncour--seemed absolutely deserted, not a
person being visible even around the large barracks in the latter town.
While the little party of officers and spectators, including the
correspondent, were watching the artillery duel on the far horizon or
endeavoring to pick out the infantry positions, a shrapnel suddenly
burst directly before them, high in the air. There was a general stir,
the assumption being that the French had taken the group on the
hillside for a battery staff picking out positions for the guns; but as
other shots were fired it was seen that the shrapnel was exploding
regularly above the barracks, a mile and a half away, the French
evidently suspecting the presence of German troops there.
A ten-mile ride southward led to the position of the Austrian 12-inch
battery. The two guns this time were planted by the side of the road,
screened only in front by a little wood, but exposed to view from both
sides, the rear, and above. For this greater exposure the battery had
paid correspondingly, several of its men having been killed or wounded
by hostile fire. Here, as in the German batteries, the war work in
progress went on with a machinelike regularity and absence of
spectacular features more characteristic of a rolling mill than a
battle. The men at the guns went through their work with the deftness
and absence of confusion of high-class mechanics. The heavy shells were
rolled to the guns, hoisted by a chain winch to the breech opening, and
discharged in uninteresting succession, a short pause coming after each
shot, until the telephonic report from the observation stand was
received. The battery had been firing all day at Fort Lionville, at a
range of 9,400 meters, (nearly six miles,) and the battery commander was
then endeavoring to put out of action the only gun turret which still
answered the fire. The task of finding this comparatively minute target,
forty or fifty feet in diameter, was being followed with an accuracy
which promised eventual success.
The shells from the guns started on their course with characteristic
minute-long shrieks. Watches were pulled out to determine just how long
the shrieks could be heard, and the uninitiated were preparing to hear
the sound of the explosion itself. The battery chief explained, however,
that this scream was due to the conditions immediately around the muzzle
of the gun, and could not be heard from other points. He invited close
watch of the atmosphere a hundred yards before the gun at the next shot.
Not only could the projectile be seen plainly in the beginning of its
flight, but the waves of billowing air, rushing back to fill the void
left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a tempestuous sea
of gas, could be distinctly observed. This airy commotion caused the
sound heard for more than a minute.
*The Slaughter in Alsace*
*By John H. Cox of The London Standard.*
BASLE, Switzerland, Aug. 19.--I have just returned from an inspection of
the scenes of the recent fighting between the French and Germans in the
southern districts of Alsace.
Dispatches from Paris and Berlin describe the engagements between the
frontier and Mülhausen as insignificant encounters between advance
guards. If this be true in a military sense, and the preliminaries of
the war produce the terrible effects I have witnessed, the disastrous
results of the war itself will exceed human comprehension.
As a Swiss subject I was equipped with identification papers and
accompanied by four of my countrymen, all on bicycles.
At the very outset the sight of peasants, men and women, unconcernedly
at work in the fields gathering the harvest, struck me as strange and
unnatural. The men were either old or well advanced in middle age.
Everywhere women, girls, and mere lads were working.
The first sign of war was the demolished villa of a Catholic priest at a
village near Ransbach. This priest had lived there for many years,
engaged in religious work and literary pursuits. After the outbreak of
the war the German authorities jumped at the conclusion that he was an
agent of the French Secret Service and that he had been in the habit of
sending to Belfort information concerning German military movements and
German measures for defense--very often by means of carrier pigeons.
The Alsatians say that these accusations were utterly unjust; but last
week a military party raided the priest's house, dragged him from his
study, placed him against his own garden wall and shot him summarily as
a traitor and spy. The house was searched from top to bottom, and
numerous books and papers were removed, after which the building was
destroyed by dynamite. The priest was buried without a coffin at the end
of his little garden plot, and some of the villagers placed a rough
cross on the mound which marked the place of interment.
In the next large village we were told that it had been successively
occupied by French and German troops and had been the scene of stiff
infantry fighting.
Here we found groups of old men and boys burying dead men and horses,
whose bodies were already beginning to be a menace to health. The
weather here has been exceptionally hot, and the countryside is bathed
in blazing sunshine. Further on were a number of German soldiers beating
about in the standing crops on both sides of the road, searching for
dead and wounded. They said many of the wounded had crawled in among the
wheat to escape being trodden upon by the troops marching along the
road, and also to gain relief from the heat.
On the outskirts of another large village we saw a garden bounded by a
thick hedge, behind which a company of French infantry had taken their
stand against the advancing German troops. Among the crushed flowers
there were still lying fragments of French soldiers' equipments, two
French caps stained with blood and three torn French tunics, likewise
[Transcriber: original 'liewise'] dyed red. The walls of the cottage
bore marks of rifle bullets, and the roof was partially burned.
Passing through the villages we saw on all sides terrible signs of the
devastation of war--houses burned, uncut grain trodden down and rendered
useless, gardens trampled under foot; everywhere ruin and distress.
At a small village locally known as Napoleon's Island we found the
railway station demolished and the line of trucks the French had used as
a barricade. These trucks had been almost shot to pieces, and many were
stained with blood. Outside the station the small restaurant roof had
been shot away; the windows were smashed, and much furniture had been
destroyed. Nevertheless the proprietor had rearranged his damaged
premises as well as possible and was serving customers as if nothing had
happened.
Just outside this village there are large common graves in which French
and German soldiers lie buried together in their uniforms. Large mounds
mark these sites. Here again the villagers have placed roughly hewn
crosses.
Not far from Huningen we met an intelligent Alsatian peasant who
remembered the war of 1870 and had witnessed some engagements in the
last few days. Here is his account of what he saw:
"The bravery on both sides was amazing. The effects of artillery fire
are terrific. The shells burst, and where you formerly saw a body of
soldiers you see a heap of corpses or a number of figures writhing on
the ground, torn and mutilated by the fragments of the shell. Those who
are unhurt scatter for the moment, but quickly regain their composure
and take up their positions in the fighting line as if nothing had
happened. The effects of other weapons are as bad. It seems remarkable
that soldiers can see the destruction worked all around them, yet can
control their nerves sufficiently to continue fighting.
"I remember the battles of 1870, in five or six of which I fought
myself, but they bear no comparison with the battles of 1914. War
forty-four years ago was child's play compared with war at the present
time."
In several villages the schools and churches and many cottages are
filled with wounded Frenchmen and Germans, and everything is being done
to relieve their sufferings. In the stress of fighting many wounded
soldiers were left from three to ten or twelve hours lying in the fields
or on the roads. The ambulance equipment of modern armies appears
utterly inadequate, and most of the wounded were picked up by villagers.
A French aeroplane from Belfort reconnoitred the German positions behind
Mülhausen. As it passed over the German works at the Isteiner Klotz
there ensued a continuous firing of machine guns and rifles. The
aeroplane, which had swerved downward to give its two occupants a closer
and clearer view of the German position, immediately rose to a much
greater altitude and escaped injury. It cruised over the German position
for more than an hour, now rising, now falling, always pursued by the
bullets of the enemy.
This aerial reconnoissance [Transcriber: original 'reconnoisance'], part
of which was carried out at an altitude as low as 1,000 feet, was
undertaken at terrible risk, but in this case the aeroplane escaped all
injury and returned in the direction of Belfort, doubtless with all the
information it had set out to collect.
* * * * *
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
BERNE, Aug. 22, (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)--Gebweiler, in
Alsace, twelve miles to the northwest of Mülhausen, was taken by the
French at the point of the bayonet on Aug. 20. My correspondent, who has
just arrived at Basle from the field of battle, says that eight
battalions of the German One Hundred and Fourteenth Regiment, numbering
about 10,000 men, engaged the French Army. The French artillery was
deadly and caused great ravages among the Germans, few officers
escaping.
During the whole night the wounded were being transported to villages in
the neighborhood, beyond the reach of artillery. All the buildings of
Sierenz were filled with wounded.
Hundreds of horses were stretched on the field of battle. Those of the
German artillery were killed, and in consequence the German forces left
their artillery, of which about twenty guns are now in the hands of the
French.
The object of the German troops was to cut off the retreat of the French
and force them toward the Swiss frontier--an object which they failed to
achieve.
The wounded received here say that they passed a terrible night in the
open, without water or other succor, with the pitiful neighing of
wounded horses ringing in their ears.
*Rennenkampf on the Prussian Border*
[By a Correspondent of The London Daily Chronicle.]
GRADNO, (via Petrograd,) Oct. 21.--I have returned here after a journey
along the East Prussian frontier, as close to the scenes of daily
fighting as I could obtain permission to go. The route was from the
north of Suwalki southward to Graevo, a stretch of country recently in
German occupation, but where now remains not a single German outpost.
It is stimulating to see the Russian soldier in his habits as he lives
and fights. I have seen many thousands of them camped in the rain,
swamped in bogs, or marching indefatigably over the roads which are long
quagmires of mud, always with an air of stolid contentment and the look
of being bent on business. They include Baltic Province men speaking
German. Jews from Riga and Libau are brigaded with huge Siberians, whose
marching must constitute a world record. The Cossacks are past counting,
and with them are long-coated, tight-belted Circassians and Kalmucks,
all representing a mixture of races and languages like that of the
British Empire itself.
Actually the whole line is a battle front from north of Wirballen to
well into Poland, and no day passes without contact with the Germans.
This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in
hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front
through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village
which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these
things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and the
contents dragged into the streets and there smashed. Churches have been
invariably gutted and defiled.
It is impossible not to admire these endless battalions of Siberians.
They are common objects of this countryside. I came past Suwalki as they
were moving up, column after column, in gray overcoats aswing in the
rhythm of their stride, like the kilts of Highlanders. It was they who
bore the brunt of the fighting, unsupported by artillery, in forests of
Augustowo, and, with the Baltic regiments, pushed on and took Lyck.
These are the men who marched forty miles, starting at midnight, then
went into action between Gor and Raigrod and delivered a bayonet charge
which their officers still boast about today.
I may not indicate the geography of the front on which the Russians and
Germans are now facing each other, but the German general plan is to
protect the railway and all approaches to a vital junction such as
Goldapp and Insterburg. Between them and the frontier lies a country of
singular difficulty for the troops. It is easy of defense, with small
broken hills, innumerable lakes and roads winding in watered valleys
among woods. The Germans have gone to earth in their usual lavish
fashion, digging themselves in with a thoroughness worthy of permanent
fortifications. Their trenches are five feet deep, with earthworks in
front zig-zagging as a precaution against enfilading. Some of them are
very cleverly hidden with growing bushes. All peasants remaining at the
country-side in Prussia are compelled to work digging trenches. The
emplacements [Transcriber: original 'implacements'] for guns of large
calibre have concrete foundations.
The Germans had fortified Suwalki, employing forced labor. They had
connected up the trench system with telephone installation and appointed
a Military Governor and other functionaries. Many German officers were
joined there by their wives and families, who when they retired took
with them souvenirs consisting of nearly every portable object of value
in the town, besides much furniture and clothing.
The Russian trenches are scarcely more than shallow grooves in the
ground with earth thrown up in front of them, making barely sufficient
cover for prone riflemen.
At once the German outer positions were carried by storm with ghastly
carnage.
"We didn't dig much," said a Russian officer to me. "We knew we
shouldn't stay there. We should either go forward or back, and we were
sure to go forward."
The cloud of patrols, mostly Cossacks, which flits unceasingly along the
German front is the subject of innumerable stories.
When the news was issued that the Kaiser had come east to take command
of his army on this front a Cossack came in, driving before him a plump,
distressed Prussian Captain whom he had gleaned during the day's work.
"I've brought him," he announced. "I knew him by his mustache," and he
produced an old picture postcard from his breast showing the Kaiser
with his characteristic mustache.
Near Augustowo the roads are literally blocked in many places with
abandoned German transports which became trapped in the terribly muddy
country. Dead horses in hundreds lie everywhere and the Russian Sanitary
Corps is busy burying them. Yet the Russians who are still moving about
this country retain not only their usual average health, but do not even
complain.
Between Augustowo and Raigrod a small stream is actually blocked with
German stores, including much gun ammunition. The German advance which
ended in this debacle has been the costliest defeat in point of
materials which they have yet suffered.
*The First Fight at Lodz*
*By Percival Gibbon of The London Daily Chronicle.*
WARSAW, Dec. 5, (by Courier to Petrograd.)--I have wired you previously
of the German force which advanced around Lodz and was cut off south and
east of the town. This consisted of two army corps--the Twenty-fifth
Corps and the Third Guard Corps. The isolated force turned north and
endeavored to cut its way out through the small town of Breziziny. It
was at Breziziny that final disaster overtook them.
The town and road lie in a hollow in the midst of wooded country, where
the Germans were squeezed from the Vistula and pressed to the rear. They
had fought a battle during the slow retirement of five days and were
showing signs of being short of ammunition. On the fifth day they made
their final attempt to pass through Breziziny. That was where that fine
strategist and fighting man who held Ivangorod on the Vistula brought
off the great dramatic coup for which he had been manoeuvring.
The Germans were holding the town and pouring through when he began his
general attack. Breziziny underwent nine hours of furious shelling and
only half the town is now remaining. The Russian infantry again proved
its sterling quality, and, supported by the tremendous fire of its own
guns, drove home charge after charge, smashing the German resistance
completely. By nightfall out of two army corps, numbering 80,000 men,
there remained only a remnant.
The number of prisoners reaches the total of about 20,000, and of the
remainder fully 80 per cent, were killed or wounded. This is the
estimate supplied to me. Owing to the small area on which the fighting
was concentrated, the dead are lying in great mounds and walls at points
where the charges were pushed home. For miles the countryside is dotted
with dead.
In the sparser grounds an unknown number of fugitives, most of whom are
wounded, are lurking in the woods. From Rawa, south of Skierniwice,
midway between Lodz and Warsaw, to Lodz on the line of the former German
retreat and present advance, not a single village remains. All the
burned-out district is utterly desolate.
On Dec. 1, 2, and 3 the force conducting the defense of the town of Lodz
was all but surrounded. The German positions were at Royicie on the
southern road, within four miles of the long, straggling street which
comprises most of the town of Lodz, while at Zgierz, seven miles to the
north, they had a battery of heavy guns with which they shelled the town
itself, killing several hundred civilians. The fire was chiefly directed
on the railway and station and the Russian guns were unable for some
time to locate the battery. It was discovered and reconnoitred at last
by an aeroplane.
[Illustration: The War in the East (with Net Change of Battle Line Up
to Jan, 1, 1915) from Eastern Prussia to Galicia.]
Then followed an act of heroism and harebrained enterprise which is now
the talk of the whole army. On Thursday night last the Colonel of
Artillery made his way out and with a little group of assistants
contrived to drag a field telephone wire within half a mile of the
German battery. While a searchlight was swinging over the face of the
country, he lay on the ground, and from there directed the Russian guns,
which with his help actually succeeded in silencing the battery. The
Russian guns were at this time placed in the streets of Lodz.
On Thursday night, when the attack culminated, there were 700 guns in
action at one time on both sides, and throughout the night all was
alight with flashes from the guns and bursting shells, and the thunder
of the guns was faintly audible on the outskirts of Warsaw, sixty miles
away.
Then there followed a general assault of the Germans, a charge of huge
masses of men, who followed up into the glare of the searchlights under
an inferno of gunfire. Here again the Siberians demonstrated the
qualities which have made them famous throughout the war. They met the
Germans with a rifle fire from the trenches which not only stopped them
but shattered them. They again played the old trick of allowing the
enemy to approach within fifty feet, meanwhile holding their fire, and
then blowing them off their feet with rifle fire and their use of the
mitrailleuse.
The attack failed utterly, and from the very manner of it the Russian
losses could not be otherwise than light, while the German losses in the
whole of the operations against Lodz and the neighboring positions
exceed a hundred thousand killed. No guess at the number of their
wounded can be attempted, but we know that score upon score of trains
filled with them have gone west along the Kalisz line, and still
continue to go.
*The First Invasion of Servia*
[By a Correspondent of The London Standard.]
NISH, Servia, Aug. 31.--After the butcheries and atrocities which I
witnessed during preceding battles I thought I would get accustomed and
insensible to these scenes of blood, but from my last visit to the
slaughter house I have brought such visions of horror that their very
thought makes me shudder. The object of the Austrian Army seems to have
been complete devastation.
The fierce battle which the Servians gave them incessantly for more than
a week may be divided into two conflicts of equal intensity which raged
along the ridge of the heights of Tser. Each of the two slopes,
descending one to the Save and the town of Shabatz and the other to the
Drina, is now nothing but a charnel house.
I could not say which of these two conflicts was more murderous, but
this admirably fertile region, with its countless fruit trees, is now
sheltering the last remains of hundreds of butchered men, women, and
children.
When after three days and three nights of truceless fighting the
Servians succeeded in surprising the enemy in the middle of the night at
Tser, the toll of dead was so colossal that the Servian troops were
constrained for the time being to abandon burying the corpses.
Everywhere the fighting was of the fiercest conceivable nature, for to
resist the invaders was to the Servians a question of life and death. At
several points they fought right up to the last man, succumbing but
never falling back.
The volunteer corps of Capt. Tankositch, the famous leader whose head
Austria is so anxious to gain, was charged to defend Kroupage, situated
south of the battle front, between Losnitza and Lionbovia. Considerable
Austrian forces attempted to advance with the view of driving the
Captain back.
For two days and three nights Tankositch and 236 volunteers held their
position. At last three whole Austrian regiments surrounded them, but
rather than yield to the enemy Tankositch and his gallant miniature army
resolved to fight to the last. In the dead of night he sent out a small
group to meet the Austrians. This group, consisting of a mere handful of
soldiers, hurled a shower of bombs at the enemy, cutting up his ranks,
and secured a free pass.
[Illustration: The Battlefield in Servia.]
At the first break of day, when Tankositch counted his men, only
forty-six answered the call. They surrounded more than a hundred
prisoners.
It will be realized that in the course of such sharp fighting the
Servian losses must have been considerable, although they were much
smaller than those of the enemy.
The most pitiful and heartrending aspect of these scenes was presented
by the long procession of Servian survivors from the neighboring
villages, consisting of old men, women, and children, bringing in the
heavy toll of mutilated human beings. At Valievo, the nearest town to
the field of battle, large masses of Servian and Austrian wounded kept
pouring in incessantly. About 10,000 have already arrived. All had to be
examined, all had to have their wounds dressed, and at Valievo there are
only six doctors.
In spite of this appalling shortage of medical aid, I witnessed
yesterday a most touching spectacle. A car drawn by oxen brought to the
hospital at Valievo its load of mutilated soldiers. In the first portion
of the car were three wounded Austrians and in the second two wounded
Servians and two more Austrians. The convoys wanted to carry the
Austrian wounded to the dressing room before their own wounded. A
Servian doctor stopped them.
"Bring the wounded in in the order in which they come," he commanded,
and, without any regard for the nationality of his patients, the doctor
and his colleagues commenced their humanitarian work.
What are the Red Crosses of the neutral countries waiting for? Why do
they not come here? In the name of gallant little Servia, in the name of
a humane and pitiful people, I make urgent appeal to the Red Crosses to
send a portion of their staff here. There are thousands of lives to be
saved.
Now I must begin a chapter of sorrows. I wanted to witness the
Austro-Hungarian excesses a second time before speaking of them, so that
I could give an exact and genuine account of actual facts. Courage
failed me to see all, but what I have seen can be summed up in one
phrase. In the environs of Shabatz the vanquished put the finishing
touch to their acts of fearful savagery by butchering their Servian
prisoners, whose corpses were found heaped up in the town.
Yesterday and the day before I ran across country through Valievo toward
Drina. Further north, barely forty miles from Valievo, at Seablatcha,
the poor refugees who had fled from their houses before the onslaught of
the Austrians showed me eight young people, tied one to another, who
were all pierced by bayonets.
Five miles from there, at Bella Tserka, fugitives of the village with
indescribable despair were burying the mutilated, bodies of fourteen
little girls. Six peasants were found hanging in an orchard.
At Lychnitsa, on the Drina, about a hundred old men, inoffensive
civilians, were massacred before the eyes of their wives and children.
All the women and children were led over on the other side of the bank
of the Drina in order to compel the Servians to stop their fire.
It is not war that Austria-Hungary tried to make on Servia. That great
nation wanted to exterminate the Servian people. She thought she would
succeed before Servia had time to defend herself.
Austrian prisoners affirm that they received orders to hang all those
striving against their country, to burn all the enemy's villages, and
put all their inhabitants to death.
The Servian Quartermaster General is drawing up an official list of
these Austro-Hungarian deeds.
*The Attack on Tsing-tau*
*By Jefferson Jones of The Minneapolis Journal and The Japan
Advertiser.*
JAPANESE HEADQUARTERS, Shantung, Nov. 2.--I have seen war from a grand
stand seat. I never before heard of the possibility of witnessing a
modern battle--the attack of warships, the fire of infantry and
artillery, the manoeuvring of airships over the enemy's lines, the
rolling up from the rear of reinforcements and supplies--all at one
sweep of the eye; yet, after watching [Transcriber: original 'watchnig']
for three days the siege of Tsing-tau from a position on Prinz Heinrich
Berg, 1,000 feet above the sea level and but three miles from the
beleaguered city, I am sure that there is actually such a thing as a
theatre of war.
On Oct. 31, the date of the anniversary of the birth of the Emperor of
Japan, the actual bombardment of Tsing-tau began. All the residents of
the little Chinese village of Tschang-tsun, where was fixed on that day
the acting staff headquarters of the Japanese troops, had been awakened
early in the morning by the roar of a German aeroplane over the village.
Every one quickly dressed and, after a hasty breakfast, went out to the
southern edge of the village to gaze toward Tsing-tau.
A great black column of smoke was arising from the city and hung like a
pall over the besieged. At first glance it seemed that one of the
neighboring hills had turned into an active volcano and was emitting
this column of smoke, but it was soon learned that the oil tanks in
Tsing-tau were on fire.
As the bombardment was scheduled to start late in the morning, we were
invited to accompany members of the staff of the Japanese and British
expeditionary forces on a trip to Prinz Heinrich Berg, there to watch
the investment of the city. It was about a three-mile journey to this
mountain, which had been the scene of some severe fighting between the
German and Japanese troops earlier in the month.