Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. "Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialat D. Vorwerk" has been changed to "Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialrat D. Vorwerk" Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. "Speaking of Prussians--" BY IRVIN S. COBB FICTION THOSE TIMES AND THESE LOCAL COLOR OLD JUDGE PRIEST FIBBLE, D. D. BACK HOME THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM WIT AND HUMOR "SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS----" EUROPE REVISED ROUGHING IT DE LUXE COBB'S BILL OF FARE COBB'S ANATOMY MISCELLANY "SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS----" PATHS OF GLORY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK [Illustration: TURNING THE EAGLE LOOSE] "_Speaking of Prussians----_" _By_ _Irvin S. Cobb_ _Author of "Back Home," "Europe Revised," "Speaking of Operations----", Etc._ [Illustration] _New York George H. Doran Company_ COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO WOODROW WILSON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES "_Speaking of Prussians--_" I I believe it to be my patriotic duty as an American citizen to write what I am writing, and after it is written to endeavour to give to it as wide a circulation in the United States as it is possible to find. In making this statement, though, I am not setting myself up as a teacher or a preacher; neither am I going upon the assumption that, because I am a fairly frequent contributor to American magazines, people will be the readier or should be the readier to read what I have to say. Aside from a natural desire to do my own little bit, my chief reason is this: Largely by chance and by accident, I happened to be one of four or five American newspaper men who witnessed at first hand the German invasion of Belgium and one of three who, a little later, witnessed some of the results of the Germanic subjugation of the northern part of France. I was inside Germany at the time the rush upon Paris was checked and the retreat from the Marne took place, thereby having opportunity to take cognisance of the feelings and sentiments and the impulses which controlled the German populace in a period of victory and in a period of reversals. I am in the advantageous position, therefore, of being able to recount as an eyewitness--and, as I hope, an honest one--something of what war means in its effects upon the civilian populace of a country caught unawares and in a measure unprepared; and, more than that, what war particularly and especially means when it is waged under the direction of officers trained in the Prussian school.