With the French in France and Salonika — John Shaqi
With the French in France and SalonikaDavis, Richard Harding
History
With the French in France and Salonika
Davis, Richard Harding
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
This book was written during the three last months of 1915 and the first
month of this year in the form of letters from France, Greece, Serbia,
and England. The writer visited ten of the twelve sectors of the French
front, seeing most of them from the first trench, and was also on the
French-British front in the Balkans. Outside of Paris the French cities
visited were Verdun, Amiens, St. Die, Arras, Chalons, Nancy, and Rheims.
What he saw served to strengthen his admiration for the French army and,
as individuals and as a nation, for the French people, and to increase
his confidence in the ultimate success of their arms.
This success he believes would come sooner were all the fighting
concentrated in Europe. To scatter the forces of the Allies in
expeditions overseas, he submits, only weakens the main attack and the
final victory. At the present moment, outside of her armies for defense
in England and for offense in Flanders, Great Britain is supporting
armies in Egypt, German East Africa, Salonika, and Mesopotamia. No one
who has seen in actual being one of these vast expeditions, any one of
which in the past would have commanded the interest of the entire world,
can appreciate how seriously they cripple the main offensive. Each robs
it of hundreds of thousands of men needed in the trenches, of the
transports required to carry those men, of war-ships to convoy them, of
hospital ships to mend them, of medical men, medical stores, aeroplanes,
motor-trucks, ambulances, machine-guns, field-guns, siege-guns, and
millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition.
Transports that from neutral ports should be carrying bully beef, grain,
and munitions, are lying idle at a rent per day of many hundreds of
thousands of pounds, in the harbors of Moudros, Salonika, Aden,
Alexandria, in the Persian Gulf, and scattered along both coasts of
Africa. They are guarded by war-ships withdrawn from duty in the Channel
and North Sea. What, in lives lost, these expeditions have cost both
France and Great Britain, we know; what they have cost in millions of
money, it would be impossible even to guess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account