Of twenty bridges, there remained but beams rolled up by the waters--and yawning gaps. Now comes the order: In three days new bridges must be finished! Haste, men! Haste! Rain or no rain, it must be done! Pioneers and railway builders working together, hunt up material, drag and hammer and ram it together; take the rain for the sweat of their brows; look like fat toiling devils; hang along the banks, lie in the water--after all, in this weather, no one can get any wetter! They speak very little, and never laugh. Three days are short. Nothing, nothing but duty! Not a thought remained for the distant homeland and dear ones far away; the only thought, by day and by night--on to the enemy, come what may! No mind intent on any other goal. No time to lose! No time to lose! Haste! Haste! And forward and backward and criss-cross through the gray Ardennes, the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing day after day. Laughter, when we tried it, died sickly on our lips. The bridges! the bridges! and nothing but the bridges! Empty belly, and limbs like lead. Once more, now; all together for a last great heave! There lies Fumay on the smooth-flowing river; and next to the old bridge, a newly built one stretches from shore to shore--a German roadway, a roadway to good fortune! Captain of the Guard! You? From the Staff Headquarters? He shouts my name as he approaches. "Congratulations! Congratulations!" And he waves a paper above a hundred heads. "Telegram from home! Make way there, you rascal! At the home of our poet--I've just learned it--a little war girl has arrived!" I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins?... I see a new bridge reaching on-- Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness. My little girl! I have a little girl in my home!... You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time.... I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men for a single heart-throb listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's mouth--stand there and smile around me, in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness. And yet, it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born. (Written Sept. 17, 1914, in the field.) Letter of the Duke of Altenburg From a letter written from the front by the Duke of Altenburg on Sept. 5, and published in the Altenburger Zeitung.