War & Military Books

THE GREY ANGEL Her predilection for things French came from childish recollections of school-days in Paris, and a hasty removal thence by her father during the revolution of '48, of later travels as a little maiden, by diligence, to Pau and the then undiscovered Pyrenees, to a Montpellier and a Nice as yet unspoiled. Unto her seventy-eighth year, her French accent had remained unruffled, her soul... more...

I A SPECK IN THE SKY It was Marta who first saw the speck in the sky. Her outcry and her bound from her seat at the tea-table brought her mother and Colonel Westerling after her onto the lawn, where they became motionless figures, screening their eyes with their hands. The newest and most wonderful thing in the world at the time was this speck appearing above the irregular horizon of the Brown range,... more...

CHAPTER I Hillsdale is "somewhere in the United States of America"—but there are hundreds of Hillsdales! This particular Hillsdale is no less, no more, than the others. It contains the usual center of business activity clustering about a rather modern hotel. One of its livery stables has been remodelled into a moving-picture house, the other into a garage; one of its newspapers has become a... more...

CHAPTER I This is the story of Doggie Trevor. It tells of his doings and of a girl in England and a girl in France. Chiefly it is concerned with the influences that enabled him to win through the war. Doggie Trevor did not get the Victoria Cross. He got no cross or distinction whatever. He did not even attain the sorrowful glory of a little white cross above his grave on the Western Front. Doggie was... more...

THE BLUE PAVILIONS.   TO A FORMER SCHOOLFELLOW. MY DEAR —, I will not write your name, for we have long been strangers; and I, at any rate, have no desire to renew our friendship. It is now ten years and more from the end of that summer term when we shook hands at the railway-station and went east and west with swelling hearts; and since then no report has come of you. In the meantime you may have... more...

I MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at the bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery of the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the first floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and overlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool—red, green, brown, or white—from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude... more...

THE BAROMETER FALLING The September morning was warmer and more enervating than September mornings in Maryland usually are, though the month is generally conceded to be a trying one. Even at beautiful Severndale where, if at any point along the river, a refreshing breeze could almost always be counted upon, the air seemed heavy and lifeless, as though the intense heat of the summer had taken from it... more...

CHAPTER I. “Well, little friend, and where do you hail from?” The speaker was a merry-faced, brown-eyed boy of eleven, with curly brown hair—just the school-boy all over. He had leaped into a railway carriage with cricket-bat, fishing-rod, and a knowing-looking little hamper, which he deposited on the seat beside him; then away went the snorting steam horse, train, people, and all, and out came... more...

INTRODUCTION. As the Commander-in-Chief of the American Naval Squadron blockading Santiago and the Cuban coast, the auxiliary cruiser "Yankee," manned by the New York Naval Reserves, came immediately under my observation, and it is a pleasure for me to speak of the spirit and efficiency shown by the officers and crew during their stay under my command. The young men forming the ship's... more...

CHAPTER I SPRING IN THE TRAIN His was the first figure to catch my eye that evening in Petrograd; he stood under the dusky lamp in the vast gloomy Warsaw station, with exactly the expression that I was afterwards to know so well, impressed not only upon his face but also upon the awkwardness of his arms that hung stiffly at his side, upon the baggy looseness of his trousers at the knees, the unfastened... more...