Military Books

PREFACE A book containing accounts of the work continually and unceasingly being carried on by the gallant officers and men of the Royal Navy should prove of considerable interest to all, and, at the present time, especially to the American reader. I am glad that a New York journalist has had the opportunity of witnessing a part of the titanic task of our courageous sea-fighters, and of personally... more...

CHAPTER I EUROPE BEFORE THE GREAT WAR To understand the Great War it is not sufficient to read the daily happenings of military and naval events as they are told in newspapers and magazines. We must go back of the facts of to-day and find in national history and personal ambition the causes of the present struggle. Years of preparation were necessary before German military leaders could convert a... more...

Major General J. G. Foster commenced a movement of his army from New Berne this morning. At 3 p. m. we came upon the enemy's pickets (near our present camping ground), when three prisoners were taken by the advance guard of the Third New York Cavalry. In attempting to press forward we found the road densely blockaded by felled trees; this blockade extended for several hundred yards, being situated... more...

"Same Old Bill, Eh Mable!" Dere Mable: Were in sunny France at last. I cant tell you much about it yet on account of its havin been so foggy since we got here. We didnt deboat in Paris as I was expectin. We sailed up a river to a town with a wall around it and got off there. I dont know what the wall was for unless to keep people in. They certinly wouldnt need one to keep anybody out of that... more...

CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO REPLENISH IT—DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS—"LITTLE RED CAP" AND HIS LETTER. Clothing had now become an object of real solicitude to us older prisoners. The veterans of our crowd—the surviving remnant of those captured at Gettysburg—had been prisoners over a year. The next in seniority—the Chickamauga boys—had been in ten... more...

The 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers is one of the oldest regiments in the service. It was raised in February and March, 1661, to form the garrison of Bombay, which had been ceded to the Crown as part of the dowry of the Infanta of Portugal, on her marriage with King Charles II. It then consisted of four companies, the establishment of each being one captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, two... more...

I POOR OLD CHINA When I came away last August, you said you wanted me to tell you about our travels, particularly about China. Like most Americans, you have a lurking sentimental feeling about China, a latent sympathy and interest based on colossal ignorance. Very well, I will write you as fully as I can. Two months ago my ignorance was fully as overwhelming as yours, but it is being rapidly dispelled.... more...

CHAPTER I AT HOME—1914-1915 August 4th, 1914, marks the end and also the beginning of two great epochs in the history of every Territorial Unit. It marked the close of our peace training and the beginning of thirteen months' strenuous war training for the thirty-seven months which we were to spend on active service abroad. The Fiery Cross which blazed across the entire Continent caught most... more...

I Had you been in Paris late in the afternoon of Monday, August third, nineteen fourteen, you might have seen a slight man, whose reddish face was adorned with a thick white mustache, walk out of the German Embassy, which was situated on the Rue de Lille near the Boulevard St. Germain. Along the boulevard and across the Pont de la Concorde he walked in a manner calculated to attract attention. He... more...

INTRODUCTION When Great Britain declared war upon Germany in August 1914, she staked her very existence as a free nation upon an incalculable adventure. Two new means and modes of warfare, both of recent invention, enormously increased the difficulties of forecast and seemed to make precedents useless. Former wars had been waged on the land and on the sea; the development of submarines and aircraft... more...