Golden Lads

Photo. Excelsior.
The famous French Fusiliers Marins. These sailors from Brittany are called Les demoiselles au pompon rouge, because of their youth and the gay red tassel on their cap.
Golden Lads and Girls all must, As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
TORONTO McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART, Limited 1916 Copyright, 1916, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1915, by the Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1916, by the Butterick Publishing Company. Copyright, 1915 and 1916, by the Tribune Association. Published, April, 1916 ( Printed in the U. S. A. )
Profits from the sale of this book will go to The American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France.
It would be futile to publish one more war-book, unless the writer had been an eye-witness of unusual things. I am an American who saw atrocities which are recorded in the Bryce Report. This book grows out of months of day-by-day living in the war zone. I have been a member of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps, which was permitted to work at the front because the Prime Minister of Belgium placed his son in military command of us. That young man, being brave and adventurous, led us along the first line of trenches, and into villages under shell fire, so that we saw the armies in action.
We started at Ghent in September, 1914, came to Furnes, worked in Dixmude, Pervyse, Nieuport and Ypres, during moments of pressure on those strategic points. In the summer of 1915, we were attached to the French Fusiliers Marins. My wife's experience covers a period of twelve months in Belgium. My own time at the front was five months.
Observers at long-distance that are neutral sometimes fail to see fundamentals in the present conflict, and talk of negotiations between right and wrong. It is easy for people who have not suffered to be tolerant toward wrongdoing. This war is a long war because of German methods of frightfulness. These practices have bred an enduring will to conquer in Frenchman and Briton and Belgian which will not pause till victory is thorough. Because the German military power has sinned against women and children, it will be fought with till it is overthrown. I wish to make clear this determination of the Allies. They hate the army of Aerschot and Lorraine as a mother hates the defiler of her child.