This close proximity of the rival forces confounds all the theories of the military writers of the past. According to the army textbooks this war is being conducted in a grossly unprofessional manner. For bringing his men so close to the enemy many a young company commander has received a severe dressing down on manoeuvres.
Of course under such circumstances abuse and badinage is continually being bandied across the intervening spaces between the trenches, and the quick-witted Frenchmen generally get the better of it in the war of words.
One of them, who came back from the Ypres neighborhood a few days ago, told me a delightful story of a practical joke played upon the Germans, who were entrenched only about thirty or forty yards away from his platoon. One bright spirit was lecturing the enemy and making dialectical rings round them.
"Hola, bosches," he cried, "your Kaiser is very brave, isn't he? He wears the Iron Cross, but he doesn't come into your trenches. Tomorrow M. Poincaré, our President, will visit us. He does not wear an Iron Cross, but he isn't afraid."
On the morrow the Germans saw a top hat come bobbing and bowing along the French trench and heard loud cries of "Vive le President!" Time after time they riddled that top hat with bullets, and still it went bobbing along until the French took it off the spade handle, threw it into the air and howled in derision.
Seeing Nieuport Under Shell Fire
[Special Cable to The New York Times.]
FURNES, Dec. 21, (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)—For several days I have been in possession of an authorization from the French commandant permitting me to penetrate to Nieuport. This town has been under bombardment by the Germans since Oct. 20. There were days, however, when no shells fell in the town and a walk in the streets presented no danger, though this was by no means the case last week, when, after a period of calm, an event of considerable importance occurred. The Allies took up the offensive in an effort to drive the Germans from the coast and recapture Ostend and Zeebrugge.
Along the whole front from the Yser to the sea there were important movements of troops. These I am not at liberty to describe, but they have for the most part only a small significance in relation to the events described in this letter. For eight days the struggle has been very severe on the Yser, and night and day hundreds of guns have been sending shells across the space dividing the two armies. Since the end of October the Germans had been established at St. Georges and Lombartzyde, close to Nieuport, and their trenches between Nieuport and Nieuport-les-Bains were separated from those of the French and Belgians only by a canal twenty yards wide running from Furnes through Nieuport to the sea.