"We've Got Them Licked, Boys!" 222
The War of Fire 232
Saved in a Hail of Shell 242
Attack on a Stranded Tank 256
The Men Whom No Danger Can Daunt 272
The Endless Line of Motor Convoys 294
The Valley of the Dead 304
Listening-Patrol Trapped by a Star-Shell 314
Locating Enemy Sappers on a Listening-Patrol 314
French Tank Cutting Wire 322
Machine-Gun Dog-Team in Belgium 338
Each Kennel Inhabited by One Wise, Silent Dog 338
Message Dog Wearing Gas Mask 342
The Zouave Bugler's Last Call 348
When Hooded Demons Take the Trenches 356
The Approach of Doom 362
Bringing up Food for the Firing-Line through a
Poison Gas Cloud 368
The Battle of Demon Faces. Flinging Bombs in a
Mist of Green Death 368
THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE SHELL STRUCK
The windows rattled ominously as the first vibration from the cannon
shook the school.
It was Tuesday, the Fourth of August, 1914.
The master laid down his book and rose. His shoulder crooked forward
threateningly.
"The German guns!" he said.
There was a sharp indrawing of breath among the lads seated on the
forms.
"It is War! Black, treacherous, murderous war!" exclaimed the master,
his voice vibrant with passion. "Those shells, now falling on Belgian
soil, are the tocsin for world-slaughter.
"You will remember, boys," he continued, his tones deepening, "that I
told you, yesterday, how at seven o'clock on Sunday evening, without
any provocation whatever, Germany announced she would invade Belgium
on the false pretext that France was planning an advance through our
territory.
"The dastardly invasion is accomplished. This morning a German force
attacked us at Visé, bombarded the town and crossed the Meuse on
pontoon bridges."
"How can Germany invade us, sir?" asked Deschamps, the head boy of
the school. "You told us, sir, that Belgium is perpetually neutral by
agreement of all the nations of Europe."
"She is so, by every law of international honor, by every pledge, by
solemn covenants sealed and sworn to by Germany herself," came the
reply. "Civilization, humanity, progress, liberty--all the things which
men have fought and died for--depend on the faith of a plighted word.
If a man's gauge and a nation's gauge no longer stand--then every
principle that has been won by the human race since the days that the
cave-man waged war with his teeth crashes into ruin."
"But what shall we be able to do, sir?" asked Horace Monroe, one of the
elder boys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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