How do these and the many other brave men who have been reported in the present war compare with the heroes of antiquity? Achilles is the foremost of Greek warriors. He personified the Greek ideal of bravery, manly beauty and fiery enthusiasm. The "Iliad" contains pages and pages about his deeds, his speeches, how he sulked in his tent, and his quarrel with Agamemnon, but it does not seem after all that he did a vast amount of harm to the enemy. Of course, he killed Hector, but that was not amazing, and he acted with considerable brutality about it.
Achilles was undoubtedly a fine orator, but in achievement he appeared to compare badly with modest Sergeant O'Leary.
STORY OF A RUSSIAN IN AN AUSTRIAN PRISON
An Officer's Remarkable Experience
This very unusual narrative, with its light on Austrian prison conditions, appeared in the Russkoe Slovo, Moscow, June 30, 1916. It was written by a petty officer of the Russian Army at the request of the paper's Paris correspondent. The correspondent tells of a party of thirty Russians who had recently arrived in Paris from Italy, all war prisoners from Austria, who had managed at different times to slip through the lines on the Italian front. It was translated for Current History.
I—"I WAS PRISONER OF THE MAGYARS"
I was taken prisoner by the Magyars in the Carpathians. We were driven to the station of Kashitzi, where we found more Russians, I don't know how many, and were placed in dirty cars, from which cattle had just been removed. The stench was terrible, the crowd unthinkable. The doors were locked all the time.... We travelled two days; on the third we arrived in a camp called Lintz. What did I see in this camp? Filthy barracks, naked bunks on which our soldiers were scattered, pale, exhausted, hungry, nearly all barefoot or in wooden clogs. Many were suffering from inflamed feet and exhaustion. I don't know how they call it in medicine, but to my mind it was the fever of starvation. One gets yellow, trembles incessantly, longs for food....
The prisoners were fed very poorly, mainly with turnips, beans, and peas.