Chapter I: Preface

This book was written during the three last months of 1915 and the first month of this year in the form of letters from France, Greece, Serbia, and England. The writer visited ten of the twelve sectors of the French front, seeing most of them from the first trench, and was also on the French-British front in the Balkans. Outside of Paris the French cities visited were Verdun, Amiens, St. Die, Arras, Chalons, Nancy, and Rheims. What he saw served to strengthen his admiration for the French army and, as individuals and as a nation, for the French people, and to increase his confidence in the ultimate success of their arms.

This success he believes would come sooner were all the fighting concentrated in Europe. To scatter the forces of the Allies in expeditions overseas, he submits, only weakens the main attack and the final victory. At the present moment, outside of her armies for defense in England and for offense in Flanders, Great Britain is supporting armies in Egypt, German East Africa, Salonika, and Mesopotamia. No one who has seen in actual being one of these vast expeditions, any one of which in the past would have commanded the interest of the entire world, can appreciate how seriously they cripple the main offensive. Each robs it of hundreds of thousands of men needed in the trenches, of the transports required to carry those men, of war-ships to convoy them, of hospital ships to mend them, of medical men, medical stores, aeroplanes, motor-trucks, ambulances, machine-guns, field-guns, siege-guns, and millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition.

Transports that from neutral ports should be carrying bully beef, grain, and munitions, are lying idle at a rent per day of many hundreds of thousands of pounds, in the harbors of Moudros, Salonika, Aden, Alexandria, in the Persian Gulf, and scattered along both coasts of Africa. They are guarded by war-ships withdrawn from duty in the Channel and North Sea. What, in lives lost, these expeditions have cost both France and Great Britain, we know; what they have cost in millions of money, it would be impossible even to guess.

For these excursions far afield it is not the military who are responsible. There is the highest authority for believing neither General Joffre nor Lord Kitchener approves of them. They are efforts launched for political effect by loyal and well-meaning, but possibly mistaken, members of the two governments. By them these expeditions were sent forth to seize some place in the sun already held by Germany, to prevent other places falling into her hands, or in the hope of turning some neutral power into an ally. It was merely dancing to Germany's music. It postponed and weakened the main attack. This war should be fought in France. If it is, Germany will be utterly defeated; she cannot long survive such another failure as Verdun, or even should she eventually occupy Verdun could she survive such a victory. When she no longer is a military threat all she possessed before the war, and whatever territory she has taken since she began the war, will automatically revert to the Allies. It then will be time enough to restore to Belgium, Serbia, Poland, and other rightful owners the possessions of which Germany has robbed them. If you surprise a burglar, his pockets stuffed with the family jewels, would you first attempt to recover the jewels, or to subdue the burglar? Before retrieving your possessions would it not be better strategy to wait until the burglar is down and out, and the police are adjusting the handcuffs?

In the first chapter of this book is reprinted a letter I wrote from Paris to the papers of the Wheeler Syndicate, stating that in no part of Europe was our country popular. It was a hint given from one American speaking in confidence to another, and as from one friend to another. It was not so received. To my suggestion that in Europe we are losing friends, the answer invariably was: "We should worry!" That is not a good answer. With a nation it surely should be as with the individuals who compose it. If, when an individual is told he has lost the good opinion of his friends, he sings, "I don't care, I don't care!" he exhibits only bad manners.

The other reply made to the warning was personal abuse. That also is the wrong answer. To kill the messenger of ill tidings is an ancient prerogative; but it leads nowhere. If it is true that we are losing our friends we should try to find out whose fault it is that we lost them, and our wish should be to bring our friends back.

Men of different countries of Europe repeatedly told me that all of a century must elapse before America can recover the prestige she has lost since this war began. My answer was that it was unintelligent to judge ninety million people by the acts, or lack of action, of one man, and that to recover our lost prestige will take us no longer than is required to get rid of that man. As soon as we elect a new President and a new Congress, who are not necessarily looking for trouble, but who will not crawl under the bed to avoid it, our lost prestige will return.

In the meantime, that France and her Allies succeed should be the hope and prayer of every American. The fight they are waging is for the things the real, unhyphenated American is supposed to hold most high and most dear. Incidentally, they are fighting his fight, for their success will later save him, unprepared as he is to defend himself, from a humiliating and terrible thrashing. And every word and act of his now that helps the Allies is a blow against frightfulness, against despotism, and in behalf of a broader civilization, a nobler freedom, and a much more pleasant world in which to live.

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.

April 11, 1916.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PRESIDENT POINCARE THANKS AMERICA 3

II. THE MUD TRENCHES OF ARTOIS 35

III. THE ZIGZAG FRONT OF CHAMPAGNE 55

IV. FROM PARIS TO THE PIRAEUS 79

V. WHY KING CONSTANTINE IS NEUTRAL 97

VI. WITH THE ALLIES IN SALONIKA 111

VII. Two Boys Against an Army 152

VIII. THE FRENCH-BRITISH FRONT IN SERBIA 165

IX. VERDUN AND ST. MIHIEL 188

X. WAR IN THE VOSGES 210

XI. HINTS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO HELP 223

XII. LONDON, A YEAR LATER 245

ILLUSTRATIONS

General Sarrail, commanding the Allied armies in Greece, making his first landing in Salonika

_Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

President Poincare on a visit to the front 18

"Of another house the roof only remained, from under it the rest of the building had been shot away" 48

The stone roof over this glass chandelier in the Arras cathedral was destroyed by shells, and the chandelier not touched 50

General Franchet d'Esperay 70

King Constantine of Greece and commander-in-chief of her armies 102

"In Salonika the water-front belongs to everybody" 122

"On one side of the quay, a moving-picture palace,
... on the other a boat unloading fish" 124

Outside the Citadel, which is mediaeval, Salonika is modern and Turkish 126

"The quay supplied every spy--German, Bulgarian, Turk, or Austrian--with an uninterrupted view" 139

"Hills bare of trees, from which the snow that ran down their slopes had turned the road into a sea of mud" 154

American war correspondents at the French front in Serbia 160

Headquarters of the French commander in Gravec, Serbia 172

After the retreat from Serbia 176

The ruined village of Gerbeviller, destroyed after their retreat by the Germans 190

"Through these woods ran a toy railroad" 192

A first-line trench outside of Verdun 200

A valley in Argonne showing a forest destroyed by shells 208

War in the forest 216

A poster inviting the proprietors of restaurants and hotels and their guests to welcome the soldiers who have permission to visit Paris, especially those who come from the districts invaded by the Germans 228

All over France, on Christmas Day and the day after, money was collected to send comforts and things good to eat to the men at the front 232

A poster advertising the fund to bring from the trenches "permissionaires," those soldiers who obtain permission to return home for six days 236

"Very interestin'. You ought to frame it" 252

"They have women policemen now" 262

WITH THE FRENCH IN FRANCE AND SALONIKA