The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915Various
History
The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
Seven millions stand
Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:
We here, full charged with our own maimed and dead,
And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore,
Can soothe how slight these ails unmerited
Of souls forlorn upon the facing shore!
Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band
Seven millions stand.
No man can say
To your great country that, with scant delay,
You must, perforce, ease them in their sore need:
We know that nearer first your duty lies;
But--is it much to ask that you let plead
Your loving kindness with you--wooing wise--
Albeit that aught you owe and must repay
No man can say?
With the German Army
By Cyril Brown.
[Staff Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
I.
GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Dec. 1.--There is a certain
monotony about the "scientific murder" of the firing line--a routine
repetition of artillery duels, alarums, and excursions which can be (and
are being) vividly described by "war correspondents" from the safe
vantage ground of comfortable cafes miles away. The real human interest
end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling around the
operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American manner, trusting
in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on your emergency
passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial Consul at
Cologne, to keep you from being shot.
For instance, you get some interesting first-hand knowledge as to how
spies can "get away with it," in spite of the perfect German military
system of controls and passes. There is no "spy hysteria" in Germany as
there apparently is in England, judging from the London papers, but none
the less the German authorities know perfectly well that there are
swarms of spies in their midst and are hunting them down with quiet,
typically Teutonic thoroughness.
But the very perfection of the German military machine is its weak spot,
and on this, my second visit to the German Great Headquarters, I was
able to give the astonished authorities a personal demonstration as to
how any smooth-tongued stranger could turn up at even this "holy of
holies." The nocturnal trail led in a military train from Luxemburg over
Longwy to Longuyon, where at 3 o'clock in the morning I met an old
reader of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Herman Herzberger, a wealthy glove leather
manufacturer of Berlin, well known to the trade in New York and
Gloversville.
"What a coincidence," Mr. Herzberger remarked in good American. "I am
going to the front with my wife to see my 18-year-old son, who is in a
hospital at Vonziers. My son, who was in the high school, enlisted as a
volunteer, with practically the whole school, at the outbreak of the
war."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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