[4] All numbers relate to the stories herein told--not to the chapters in the book. "THE SOUL OF THE WAR"--TALES OF THE HEROIC FRENCH _Revelations of a War Correspondent_ _Told by Philip Gibbs, Special Correspondent for the "London Daily Chronicle"_ The eye-witness stories of this gifted English author lay bare the soul of the Great War. He tells of the human and psychological side of warfare as he has seen it on the battle field under heavy shell fire, in bombarded towns, in field hospitals and amid great movements of troops. He reveals the throbbing heart of the ghastly brute force that mangles the body and tortures the mind of heroic men. The author says in his conclusion: "More passionate than any other emotion that has stirred man through life is my conviction that any man that has seen these things, if he has ... any human pity, should dedicate his head and heart to the sacred duty of preventing another war like this." The stories herein given are by permission of his publishers, _Robert M. McBride and Company_ (Copyright 1915), and are taken from but one chapter of this notable book, in which he relates nearly a thousand anecdotes. [5] I--STORY OF THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE The Germans, however great their army, could never have captured the soul of Paris.... When in the first days of the war I saw the soldiers of France on their way to the front, I had even then a conviction that the fighting qualities of the nation had not degenerated in forty-four years of peace.... Afterwards, during many months as a wanderer in this war, I came to know the French soldier with the intimacy of long conversations to the sound of guns, in the first line of trenches facing the enemy, in hospitals, where he spoke quietly while comrades snored themselves to death, in villages smashed to pieces by shell-fire, in troop trains overcrowded with wounded, in woods and fields pockmarked by the holes of "marmites," and in the restaurants of Paris and provincial towns where, with an empty sleeve or one trouser-leg dangling beneath the tablecloth, he told me his experiences of war with a candor in which there was no concealment of truth; and out of all these friendships and revelations of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands before my mind in heroic colors.... He does not like death--he dreads the thought of it--but without questioning his soul he springs forward to save this mother-country of his and dies upon her bosom with a cry of "Vive la France!"