Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the FrontRinehart, Mary Roberts
History
Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front
Rinehart, Mary Roberts
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Every man in the British Army to-day has counted the cost. He is there
because he elected to be there. He is going to stay by until the thing
is done, or he is. He says very little about it. He is uncomfortable
if any one else says anything about it. He is rather matter of fact,
indeed, and nonchalant as long as things are being done fairly. But
there is nothing calm about his attitude when his opponent hits below
the belt. It was a sense of fair play, as well as humanity, that made
England rise to the call of Belgium. It is England's sense of fair
play that makes her soldiers and sailors go white with fury at the
drowning of women and children and noncombatants; at the unprincipled
employment of such trickery in war as the use of asphyxiating gases,
or at the insulting and ill-treating of those of their army who have
been captured by the Germans. It is at the English, not at the French
or the Belgians, that Germany is striking in this war. Her whole
attitude shows it. British statesmen knew this from the beginning, but
the people were slow to believe it. But escaped prisoners have told
that they were discriminated against. I have talked with a British
officer who made a sensational escape from a German prison camp.
German soldiers have called across to the French trenches that it was
the English they were after.
In his official order to his troops to advance, the German Emperor
voiced the general sentiment.
"It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you concentrate your
energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and
that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my
soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over
General French's contemptible little army.
"Headquarters,
"Aix-la-Chapelle, August 19th, 1914."
In the name of the dignity of great nations, compare that order with
Lord Kitchener's instructions to his troops, given at the same time.
"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French
comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform
a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.
Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your
individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example
of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to
maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping
in this struggle.
"The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part,
take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no
better service than in showing yourselves in France and Belgium in
the true character of a British soldier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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