"I went up into the trenches on Christmas night. One wouldn't have thought there was a war going on. All day our soldiers and the Germans were talking and singing half-way between the opposing trenches. The space was filled with English and Germans handing one another cigars. At night we sang carols."
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EXTRACT FROM A LETTER PUBLISHED BY THE "Berliner Tageblatt" OF
DECEMBER 24, 1914.
The author of the letter is Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, a captain of the reserves and Prussian "Landrat," obviously a kinsman of the late diplomatist and Ambassador in London. He wrote on October 18 from the trenches. He said:—
"Whoever fights in this war in the front ranks, whoever realizes all the misery and unspeakable wretchedness caused by a modern war … will unavoidably arrive at the conviction, if he had not acquired it earlier, that mankind must find a way of overcoming war. It is untrue that eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. A time will and must arrive which will no longer know war, and this time will mark a gigantic progress in comparison with our own. Just as human morality has overcome the war of all against all; just as the individual had to accustom himself to seek redress of his grievances at the hands of the State after blood feuds and duels had been banished by civil peace, so in their development will the nations discover ways and means to settle budding conflicts not by means of wars, but in some other regulated fashion, irrespective of what each of us individually may think."
Unfortunately, the writer of this thoughtful letter fell on the battlefield.