I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy
swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point
in the far sky. Officers and men, for a single heart-throb, listen
as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's
lips, stand there and smile around me in blissful pensiveness, as if
there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the
sun of olden happiness.
And yet it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old
castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.
* * * * *
The following is written from the front by Corp. T. Trainor:
We have had German cavalry thrown at us six times in the last four
hours, and each time it has been a different body, so that they must
have plenty to spare. There is no eight hours for work, eight hours
for sleep, and eight hours for play with us, whatever the Germans
may do.
The strain is beginning to tell on them more than on us, and you can
see by the weary faces and trembling hands that they are beginning
to break down.
One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as
though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what
he had been through. The French are fighting hard all round us with
a grit and go that will carry them through.
Have you ever seen a little man fighting a great, big, hulking giant
who keeps on forcing the little chap about the place until the giant
tires himself out, and then the little one, who has kept his wind,
knocks him over? That's how the fighting here strikes me.
We are dancing about round the big German Army, but our turn will
come. Our commanders know their business, and we shall come out on
top all right.
Sergt. Major McDermott does not write under ideal literary
conditions, but his style is none the worse for the inspiration
furnished by the shrieking shell.
I am writing to you with the enemy's shells bursting and screaming
overhead; but God knows when it will be posted, if at all.
We are waiting for something to turn up to be shot at, but up to
now, though their artillery has been making a fiendish row all along
our front, we haven't seen as much as a mosquito's eyelash to shoot
at. That's why I am able to write, and some of us are able to take a
bit of rest while the others keep "dick."
There is a fine German airship hanging around like a great blue
bottle up in the sky, and now and then our gunners are trying to
bring it down, but they haven't done it yet.
It's the quantity, not the quality of the German shells that is
having effect on us, and it's not so much the actual damage to life
as the nerve-racking row that counts for so much.
Townsmen who are used to the noise and roar of streets can stand it
better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far
the fittest men are those of regiments mainly recruited in the big
cities.
A London lad near me says it's no worse than the roar of motor
'buses and other traffic in the city on a busy day.