Chapter I The Rochambeau S'en Va-t-en Guerre Moored alongside a great two-storied pier, with her bow to the land, the cargo and passenger boat, Rochambeau, of the Compagnie Générale was being loaded with American supplies for the France of the Great War. A hot August sun struck spots and ripples of glancing radiance from the viscous, oily surface of the foul basin in which she lay inert; the air... more...

BACK TO THE FRONT How America fails to realize the war—Difficulties of realization—Uncle Sam is sound at heart—In London again—A Chief of Staff who has risen from the ranks—Sir William Robertson takes time to think—At the front—Kitchener's mob the new army—A quiet headquarters—Sir Douglas Haig—His office a clearing house of ideas—His business to deal in blows—"The... more...

INTRODUCTION It is curious to follow anything right back to its inception, and to discover from what extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange, for instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The... more...

CHAPTER I TO FRANCE (APRIL 1917) The boat was crowded. Khaki, everywhere khaki; lifebelts, rain and storm, everything soaked. Destroyers, churning through the waves, played strange games all round us. Some old-time Tommies, taking everything for granted, smoked and laughed and told funny stories. Others had the look of dumb animals in pain, going to what they knew only too well. The new hands for... more...

CHAPTER I PER ARDUA AD ASTRA In prehistoric times the first man to make for himself a stone hatchet probably became the greatest warrior of his particular region. He may not have been as strong physically as his neighbor, but with the aid of so marvellous an invention as a stone hatchet he undoubtedly conquered his enemies and became a great prehistoric potentate, until some other great man made a... more...

PARIS WAR DAYS Saturday, August 1, 1914 This war comes like the traditional "Bolt from the Blue!" I had made arrangements to retire from active journalism and relinquish the duties of Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune, which I had fulfilled for sixteen consecutive years. In reply to a request from Mr. Ogden Reid, I had expressed willingness to remain at my post in Paris until the... more...

IN HOSPITAL Close behind the trenches on the Ypres salient stands part of "Chapel Farm"—the rest of it has long been trampled down into the mud by the many hundreds of men who have passed by there. Enough of the ruin still stands for you to trace out the original plan of the place—a house and two barns running round three sides of the farmyard that is fœtid and foul and horrible. It is an... more...

CHAPTER I Yon days! Yon palmy, peaceful days! I go back to them, and they are as a dream. I go back to them again and again, and live them over. Yon days of another age, the age of peace, when no man dared even to dream of such times as have come upon us. It was in November of 1913, and I was setting forth upon a great journey, that was to take me to the other side of the world before I came back again... more...

I La Creste, Huiry, Couilly. S et M. September 16, 1914 Dear Old Girl:— More and more I find that we humans are queer animals. All through those early, busy, exciting days of September,—can it be only a fortnight ago?—I was possessed, like the "busy bee," to "employ each shining hour" by writing out my adventures. Yet, no sooner was the menace of those days gone, than, for days at... more...

I"Le Brave Belge!" The rush from Monterey, in Mexico, when a telegram said that general European war was inevitable; the run and jump on board the Lusitania at New York the night that war was declared by England against Germany; the Atlantic passage on the liner of ineffaceable memory, a suspense broken by fragments of war news by wireless; the arrival in England before the war was a week old;... more...