France. Armée. Légion étrangère; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
This evidence is accumulative, convincing, damning proof, it is
furnished by the bodies of the victims, by neighbor eye witnesses, by
devastated, homes, and by mutilated wrecks, who survived—some being
recaptured by French troops, others, repatriated as useless, sent back
to France via Switzerland.
These, and other crimes, are corroborated in the four reports of the
French Inquiry, in “Violations of International Law,” published, by
order of the French Foreign Minister, by the twenty-two reports of the
Belgian Commission, the reports of a German book published May 15, 1915,
diaries and note books found on bodies of dead German soldiers, wounded
men and prisoners. They are books of horror, but, books of truth,
glaring evidence of murdered men, misused women, ruined homes. Much of
them is actually furnished by perpetrators of the deeds. Comments are
unnecessary, words inadequate, cold print fails.
FROM A GERMAN DIARY
“The natives fled from the village. It was horrible. There was clotted
blood on the beards, and the faces we saw were terrible to behold. The
dead—about sixty—were at once buried; among them were many old women,
some old men and a half-delivered woman, awful to see. Three children
had clasped each other and died thus. The altar and vault of the church
were shattered. They had a telephone there to communicate with the
enemy. This morning, Sept. 2, all the survivors were expelled, and I saw
four little boys carrying a cradle with a baby five or six months old in
it, on two sticks—all this was terrible to behold. Shot after shot,
salvo after salvo—chickens, etc. all killed. I saw a mother with her two
children, one had a great wound in the head and had lost an eye.”
L’ENVOI
Into Europe’s seething cauldron of blood and tears, American youth have
been cast.
Patriotism, pride, resolutely demands that the Devil incarnate, who
stirs his awful mess of ghoulhash, shall perish.
Our national peril, the whole earth’s dire need, assembling the
Country’s selected young manhood, now make this a United States in
fact—probably, for the first time since Washington and Valley Forge.
I have tried to make you see war as I know it, war with no footballs,
portable bath tubs, victrolas nor Red Triangle Huts. Such blessings are
God-sends—more power to His messengers!
[Illustration]
I met a company of the 18th U. S. Engineers swinging along the
tree-fringed macadamized highway toward the front. Clean-cut, well
dressed, smooth-shaven, happy and gay. It was a joy to see them. It made
a man feel proud to belong to the same race. They yelled a greeting in
broken French to the dirty Poilu, who responded in the latest American
slang, and marched away singing into the darkness, the words echoing
loud or low, as different sections took up the tune:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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