If Russia gave to this Poland in lieu of actual independence the most liberal autonomy and reconstructed a Polish kingdom under the suzerainty of the Czar--a Poland with its Diet, language, schools and army--would not the present war seem to us a genuine war of liberation and Nicholas II. a sort of Czar-liberator? And if resuscitated Poland, taught by misfortune, compassionate toward the persecuted and proscribed because she herself has been persecuted and proscribed, should try to cure herself of her anti-Semitism, which has saddened her best friends in France, would not you say that she indeed deserved to be resuscitated from among the dead? "With the Honors of War" By Wythe Williams [From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.] It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at Gerbéviller, the little "Martyr City" that hides its desolation as it hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges. There was a dense fog. At 6 A.M. fog usually covers the valleys of the Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the "First French Army," which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him. He said it would be necessary to have the permit "viséd for departure" at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines of another building just distinguishable through the fog. This was proof that the town contained buildings--not just a building. The place was not entirely destroyed, as I had supposed. I went down the main street from the station, the fog enveloping me. I had letters to the town officials, but it was too early in the morning to present them. I would first get my own impressions of the wreck and the ruin. But I could see nothing on either hand as I stumbled along in the mud. So I commented to myself that this was not as bad as some places I had seen. I thought of the substantial station and the buildings across the road--untouched by war. I compared Gerbéviller with places where there is not even a station--where not one simple house remains as the result of "the day when the Germans came." The road was winding and steep, dipping down to the swift little stream that twists a turbulent passage through the town. The day was coming fast but the fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin, irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened, toned down by the banks of white vapor.