GOLDEN LADS

Photo. Excelsior.

THE PLAY-BOYS OF THE WESTERN FRONT.

The famous French Fusiliers Marins. These sailors from Brittany are called "Les demoiselles au pompon rouge," because of their youth and the gay red tassel on their cap.

GOLDEN LADS

BY

ARTHUR GLEASON

AND

HELEN HAYES GLEASON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

"Golden Lads and Girls all must, As chimney sweepers, come to dust."

TORONTO
McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART, Limited
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
The Century Co.

Copyright, 1915, by the
Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1916, by the
Butterick Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1915 and 1916, by the
Tribune Association.

Published, April, 1916
(Printed in the U. S. A.)

Profits from the sale of this book will go to "The American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France."

TO THE
SAILORS OF BRITTANY
THE BOY SOLDIERS OF THE FRENCH FUSILIERS MARINS
WHOSE WOUNDED IT WAS OUR PRIVILEGE TO CARRY IN FROM THE
FIELD OF HONOR AT MELLE, DIXMUDE, AND NIEUPORT

CONCERNING THIS BOOK

It would be futile to publish one more war-book, unless the writer had been an eye-witness of unusual things. I am an American who saw atrocities which are recorded in the Bryce Report. This book grows out of months of day-by-day living in the war zone. I have been a member of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps, which was permitted to work at the front because the Prime Minister of Belgium placed his son in military command of us. That young man, being brave and adventurous, led us along the first line of trenches, and into villages under shell fire, so that we saw the armies in action.

We started at Ghent in September, 1914, came to Furnes, worked in Dixmude, Pervyse, Nieuport and Ypres, during moments of pressure on those strategic points. In the summer of 1915, we were attached to the French Fusiliers Marins. My wife's experience covers a period of twelve months in Belgium. My own time at the front was five months.

Observers at long-distance that are neutral sometimes fail to see fundamentals in the present conflict, and talk of "negotiations" between right and wrong. It is easy for people who have not suffered to be tolerant toward wrongdoing. This war is a long war because of German methods of frightfulness. These practices have bred an enduring will to conquer in Frenchman and Briton and Belgian which will not pause till victory is thorough. Because the German military power has sinned against women and children, it will be fought with till it is overthrown. I wish to make clear this determination of the Allies. They hate the army of Aerschot and Lorraine as a mother hates the defiler of her child.

There are two wars on the Western Front. One is the war of aggression. It was led up to by years of treachery. It was consummated in frightfulness. It is warfare by machine. Of that war, as carried on by the "Conquerors," the first half of this book tells. On points that have been in dispute since the outbreak, I am able to say "I saw." When the Army of Invasion fell on the little people, I witnessed the signs of its passage as it wrote them by flame and bayonet on peasant homes and peasant bodies.

In the second half of the book, I have tried to tell of a people's uprising—the fight of the living spirit against the war-machine. A righteous defensive war, such as Belgium and France are waging, does not brutalize the nation. It reveals a beauty of sacrifice which makes common men into "golden lads."

Was this struggle forced on an unwilling Germany, or was she the aggressor?

I believe we have the answer of history in such evidences as I have seen of her patient ancient spy system that honeycombed Belgium.

Is she waging a "holy war," ringed around by jealous foes?

I believe we have the final answer in such atrocities as I witnessed. A hideous officially ordered method is proof of unrighteousness in the cause itself.

Are you indicting a nation?

No, only a military system that ordered the slow sapping of friendly neighboring powers.

Only the host of "tourists," clerks, waiters, gentlemanly officers, that betrayed the hospitality of people of good will.

Only an army that practised mutilation and murder on children, and mothers, and old people,—and that carried it through coldly, systematically, with admirable discipline.

I believe there are multitudes of common soldiers who are sorry that they have outraged the helpless.

An army of half a million men will return to the home-land with very bitter memories. Many a simple German of this generation will be unable to look into the face of his own child without remembering some tiny peasant face of pain—the child whom he bayoneted, or whom he saw his comrade bayonet, having failed to put his body between the little one and death.

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