Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. * * * * * [Illustration: Photo by International News Service BELGIAN SOLDIERS BEHIND THE ENTRENCHMENT ON THE ROAD TO MALINES] Stories and Letters From the Trenches COMPILED BY F. B. OGILVIE Copyright 1915 by J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company New York J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY 57 Rose Street ACKNOWLEDGMENT Our thanks are due and are hereby tendered to Dr. Mary Merrit Crawford of Brooklyn, N. Y., for her letters regarding the Paris hospital patients, to the New York Times for the article, "Three Months in the Trenches," by Bert Hall, and for other letters; and to the New York Sun and various other publications for the numerous items of intense human interest which help to make this collection an accurate record of conditions at the front in the colossal European War. THE PUBLISHERS PREFACE. Letters received from soldiers in the field describe many features of the various campaigns of the war, the descriptions coming from representatives of widely differing classes of society. Unlike the rigid censorship imposed on the allied troopers by their official censors; the letters of Germans in the field show that wide liberty of expression is allowed, with only the names of places, troop divisions, and commanders, and occasionally dates, deleted. At the front are many men of prominence in many walks of life. Some of the greatest present-day poets and novelists are in the field, and that, too, serving in humble capacities, taking their risks side by side with the men in the ranks or as non-commissioned officers and sharing the daily routine of the common soldier's life. Undemocratic as officialdom is in times of peace, and harsh as its discipline has been pictured in time of war, letters from notables at the front show a surprising spirit of democracy in the relations of high and low on the battlefield, in the trenches, and on the march. The letters from the front include missives penned or scribbled by nobles and members of the royal families, high military officials, authors, Socialists, tradesmen, skilled workmen, and writers who, in peace times, have been more expert with the farmhand's scythe or manure fork, or with the street cleaner's broom than with the pen that is supposedly mightier, and certainly to them more unwieldy, than the sword.