With Our Soldiers in France

lidly paved roads of France, which are now pulsing arteries of traffic, crowded with trains of motor transports pouring in their steady stream of supplies for the men and munit

like Christmas trees with their cumbrous kits, sweating, singing,

res stand guard over the sleeping villages. A turn of the road brings us close within sound of the guns, which by night are heard far across France and along the coasts of England. Soon we enter villages, which lie within range of the enemy's "heavies," with the

held under the merciless fire of the enemy. From here to the top of the ridge the ground has been fought over, inch by inch and foot by foot. It is blasted and blackened, deep seamed by shot and shell. The trees stand on the bare ridge, stiff and stark, charred and leafless, like lonely sentinels of the dead. The ground, without a blade of grass left, is torn and tossed as by earthquake and volcano. Trenches

at attack began. In one division alone the heavy guns had fired 46,000 shells and the field artillery 180,000 more. The soun

, until the English had placed 500 tons of high explosive, that is approximately 1,000,000 pounds of amminol, beneath nineteen strategic points which were to be taken. At the foot of the ridge, along a front of nine miles, the British had concentrated their batteries, heavy guns, and vast supplies of ammunition. Day and night for a week before the battle began, the German positions had been shelled. At times the hurricane of fire died down, but it never

to that time. Then the guns began anew to prepare for the attack and a carefully planned barrage dropped just in front of the English battalions as they advanced. As the men came forward, the barrage was lifted step by step and dropped just ahead of them, to pulverize the enemy and protect the British troops. By five o'clock Messines itself was captured by the fearless Australians. There was a most desperate st

ey are again wearing down the enemy in preparation for the next advance. For the moment we feel only the grand and awful throb of vast titanic forces in terrible conflict. Day and

High above these balloons a score of British planes are darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines, acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away behind us. We are looking at one far up seemingly soaring in peace like a graceful bird poised in the air, when suddenly we see it surrounded by a dozen little white patches of smoke which show that it has come within rang

men going to and from the trenches, come in for hot tea or coffee and refreshments night and day. A significant sign forbids more than thirty men to congregate at once in this exposed spot, as sometimes these Y M C A du

holding the ground during the previous day. It is harder for the enemy's artillery to locate and destroy men scattered in these irregular holes and craters than if they were in a clear line of trenches. The British front faces down the slope toward the bristling German lines, dotted with hidden snipers and studded with sputtering ma

of the great guns, as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day, and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great star hangs suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole battlefield, and now a burning far

d survived. Here is a young American, Fred R--, a graduate of Johns Hopkins, who fought in th

nd of our guns. We could hear no distinct reports, just one steady roar of continuous explosion. The ground shook beneath us and fragments from t

With one foot on the fire step we climbed out of the deep trench and with our rifles we started forward at a walk, behind our advancing barrage. I was tense

fell, both legs blown away above the knee. I bound up his wounds and carried him on my back to the nearest dressing station. 'Fred,' he said, 'would you mind kissing me just once? So long!' an

y share. Would I like to go home now? Say, I'd rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michiga

stern Canada, who had just been through the same battl

ll underground. Three of us were killed and the other two left alive. I had one man across my chest and another across my legs, one dead

pal asked me to come and listen. But I had hardly got the headpiece on when I said, 'O Lord, they're on us!' and before I could get the thing off my ears the end of our sap fell through and the Germans were at us. There was only room to use revolvers and bayonets in that dark hole and t

be my last hour, and that I might never be found, I started to read to try and forget my wound. I read the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, and sir, that little book changed my life. I have read a chapter every day since then. I was picked up by the infantry and carried to a hospital. One night when I could not sleep for the pain, the nurse asked me if she could do anything for me, and I asked her to read the B

sapper underground. Here is the experience of a young

to describe the inferno human beings pass through every day. 'Happy' was shot to pieces with a shell a few nights ago while in bed, both arms and one leg off. I carried him for over four hours to the nearest dressing station and then sta

a simple Australian b

had I got in, than Mack got it through the face. He was able to go back, but I was simply helpless, as my legs refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench. No sooner had I done this than Fritz started to bombard. One shell fell in the hole in which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction. Then another came and landed just above my

n. It is no romance, but a grim reality of life and death. Far into t

hidden guns and the support trenches in the narrow strip of hard-won territory. Behind these are the moving columns on the long roads, the pulsing arteries of traffic, and the moving troop trains on the rails. Behind these in turn are the plying ships, the millions of toiling workers, and the suffering hearts of the nations in arms. Whole nations-yes, almost the whole of humanity-are organized for war and dragged into deadly conflict as by some devil

row strip of hard-won soil, but for every foot of a world that from henceforth must be free. The men who are fighting on grounds of moral principle would rather pay any price than lie at ease under the false shadow of militarism, materialism, and grasping greed. These men are fighting, and many of them know that they are fighting, for a new world. Not only military oppression, but industrial oppression, must go. Not only German mil

rmed and aggressive materialism, the deeper principle which lies behind it? And what is materialism but organized selfishness? Mat

umanity. Here on the very field of battle, at the throbbing heart of the conflict

g nationalism of Serbia and the expanding commercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed in conflict, but not for them are they fighting. Behind these stood two greater powers, those of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, a gro

ster, hidden group of plotting militarists could drag the whole world into war and crush its liberties and its laws beneath the iron heel of

upreme. There is a material and a spiritual side of life. On this side is the brute struggle for life; on that, the struggle for the life of others; on the one hand, the fight for the survival of the fittest, and on the other, the fight to make men fit to survive. On the left hand is selfishness and on the right service;

ge which confronts men in this war. Seventy years ago a crushed Europe faced the i

ns of action, availing yourselves of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and restored the for

even in his day and states it in bur

work, and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man from the scourges which beset him. The first seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places one human life above any victory, while the for

weariness of our own great conflict with words whic

so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that

ngs of Mazzini, vo

of Pasteu