Passed by the censor

by Wythe Williams

I could not help wondering then and since whether the German general opposite was setting his men the same splendid example. I inquired the French general's name; he was General Fayolle, conceded by all the armies to be one of the greatest artillery experts in the world. Comradeship between officers and men always is general in the French army, but I never before realized fully the officers' willingness to accept the same fate as their men.

In Paris the popular appellation for a German is "boche." Not once at the front did I hear this word used by officers or men. They deplore it, just as they deplore many things that happen in Paris. Every officer I talked to declared the Germans were a brave, strong enemy; they waste no time calling them names.

"They are wonderful, but we will beat them," was the way one officer summed up the general feeling.

Another illustration of the French officer at the front: the city of Vermelles, of 10,000 inhabitants, was captured from the Germans after thirty-four days' fighting. It was taken literally from house to house, the French engineers sapping and mining the Germans out of every stronghold, destroying every single house, incidentally forever upsetting my own one-time idea that the French are a frivolous people. So determined were they to retake this town that they fought in the streets with artillery at a distance of twenty-one feet, probably the shortest range artillery duel in the history of the world.

The Germans before the final evacuation buried hundreds of their own dead. Every yard in the city was filled with little crosses—the ground was so trampled that the mounds of graves were crushed down level with the ground—and on the crosses are printed the names, with the number of the German regiments. At the base of every cross rested either a crucifix or a statue of the Virgin or a wreath of artificial flowers, all looted from the French graveyard.

With the German graves were French graves, made afterward. I walked through this ruined city where, aside from the soldiers, the only sign of life I saw was a gaunt, prowling cat. With me, past these hundreds of graves, walked half a dozen French officers. They did not pause to read inscriptions; they did not comment on the loot and pillage of the graveyard; they scarcely looked even at the graves, but they constantly raised their hands to their caps in salute, regardless of whether the crosses marked a French or a German life destroyed.

Another illustration of French humanity:

We were driving along back of the advance lines. On the road before us a company of territorial infantry, after eight days in the trenches, were now marching back to two days of repose at the rear. Plodding along the same road was a refugee mother and several little children in a donkey cart; behind the cart, attached by a rope, trundled a baby buggy with the youngest child inside. The buggy suddenly struck a rut in the road and overturned, spilling the baby into the mud. Terrible wails arose; the soldiers stiffened to attention. Then, seeing the accident, the entire company broke ranks and rescued the infant. They wiped the dirt from its face and helped the mother to bestow it again in the cart.

Our motor had halted; and our captain from the Great General Headquarters, in his gorgeous blue uniform, climbed from the car, and discussed with the mother the safety of a baby buggy riding behind a donkey cart; at the same time congratulating the soldier who had rescued the child.

I took a brief ride at the front in an ante-bellum motorbus,—there being nothing left in Paris but the trams and subway. Busses have since been used to carry fresh meat, to transport troops and also ammunition. We trundled merrily along a little country road, the snow-white fields on either side in strange contrast to the scenery when last I rode in that bus, in my daily trips from my home to the Times office in Paris. The bus was now riddled with bullets, but the soldier conductor still jingles the bell to the motorman, although he carries a revolver where he formerly wore the register for fares.