TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR

TALES OF ADVENTURE—HEROIC DEEDS—EXPLOITS
TOLD BY THE SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, NURSES,
DIPLOMATS, EYE WITNESSES

Collected in Six Volumes
From Official and Authoritative Sources
(See Introductory to Volume I)

VOLUME I

Editor-in-Chief
FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER (Litt. D., LL.D.)
Editor of The Search-Light Library

1917
REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
NEW YORK

INTRODUCTORY

Thirty million soldiers, each living a great human story—this is the real drama of the Great War as it is being written into the hearts and memories of the men at the front. If these soldiers could be gathered around one camp-fire, and each soldier could relate the most thrilling moment of his experience—what stories we would hear! "Don Quixote," the "Arabian Nights," Dante's "Inferno," Milton's "Paradise Lost, and Regained"—all the legends and tales of the world's literature out-told by the soldiers themselves.

It is from the lips of these soldiers, and those who have passed through the tragedy of the war—the women and children whose eyes have beheld the inferno and whose souls have been uplifted by suffering and self-sacrifice—the generations will hear the epic of the days when millions of men gave their lives to "make the world safe for Democracy." The magnitude of this gigantic struggle against autocracy is such that human imagination cannot visualize it—it requires one to stand face to face with death itself.

A member of the British War Staff estimates that more than a million letters a day are passing from the trenches and bases of the various armies "to the folk back home." Another observer at the General Headquarters of one of the armies estimates that more than a million and a half diaries are being kept by the soldiers. It is in these words, inscribed by bleeding bodies and suffering hearts, that posterity is to hear True Stories of the Great War.

It is the purpose of these volumes, therefore, to begin the preservation of these soldiers' stories. This is the first collection that has been made; it is in itself an historic event. The manner in which this service has been performed may be of interest to the reader. It was my privilege to appoint a committee, or board of editors, to collect stories from soldiers in the various armies—personal letters, records of personal experiences, reminiscences, and all other available material. An exhaustive investigation has been made into the files of European and American periodicals to find the various narratives that have "crept into print."

More than eight thousand stories were considered. The vast amount of human material would require innumerable volumes to preserve it. It was the judgment of the committee that this documentary evidence could be brought into practical limitations by selecting a sufficient number of narratives to cover every human phase of the Great War and preserve them in six volumes.

This first collection of "True Stories" forms what might be termed a "story-history" of the Great War, although all chronological plan is purposely avoided in order to preserve the story-teller's "reality" rather than the historian's record.

These volumes are in the nature of a "Round Table" in which soldiers, refugees, nurses, eye-witnesses—all gather about the pages and relate the most thrilling episodes of their war experiences. We hear the tales of the soldiers who invaded Belgium, through the campaigns and battles on all the fronts, to the landing of the American troops in France. Diplomats tell of the scenes at the outbreak of the war; despatch bearers relate their missions of danger from Paris to Berlin, London, Vienna, Petrograd; refugees describe the flight of the Belgians, the exodus of the Serbians, the invasion of Poland. Emissaries at General Headquarters tell of their dinners with the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, with Hindenburg and Zimmerman, and describe the scenes inside the German empire. Soldiers from the Marne, the Aisne, Verdun—relate their experiences. We listen to passengers tossed into the sea from the Lusitania; revolutionists who overthrew the Czar in Russia; exiles returning from Siberia. We hear the tales of the fighters from South Africa, Egypt, Turkey; stories from the Far East along the seas of China. The lieutenant of the Emden relates his adventures. There are stories told by Kitchener's "mob"; the "fighting Irish," Scottish Highlanders, the Canadians, the Australians, the Hindus. The French hussars and poilus tell of their experiences; the Italians in the Alps, the Austrians in the Carpathians—the stories cover the whole world and every race and nation.

These personal narratives reveal the psychology of war in all its horrible reality—modern warfare on its gigantic scale—the genius of invention and organization applied to destruction. They reveal, moreover, the psychology of human nature and human emotions in all their moods and passions. The first impression is of the physical horror of the war, but this is soon overcome by the higher spirituality that impels men to sacrifice their lives for civilization and humanity. The stories sink at times into grossest brutality only to rise to the heights of nobility on the part of the sufferers. Officers tell of the charges of their battalions; the men in the trenches tell of the "nights of terror"; spies tell of their secret missions; nurses deliver the death-messages of the dying; priests tell how they carry the Cross of Christ to the bloody fields; the prisoners tell the "inside story of the prisons"; aviators relate their death-duels in the air; submarine officers tell how they torpedo and capture the enemies' ships. There is testimony from the lips of women who were ravaged; children who were brutally mutilated; witnesses who saw soldiers crucified; soldiers lashed to their guns; babies torn from their mothers' arms; homes in flames and ruins, cathedrals desecrated.

And yet there is an undercurrent of humanity in these human documents. In their physical aspect they are almost beyond human belief—but there is a certain spiritual force running through them. There is a nobility in them that rises above all the physical anguish.

These stories (and this war) reveal the souls of men as has nothing before in modern times. The war has taught men "how to die." These men have lost all fear of death. They have traveled the road of the crucifixion and stood before Calvary; they have caught a glimpse of something finer, nobler, truer than their own individual existence. Through suffering and self-sacrifice they have risen to the noblest heights. They have found something that we who have not faced death in the trenches may never find—they have felt an exaltation in mind and body that we may never know. There is the fire of the Old Crusaders about them; they have caught the realization of the glory of humanity as they march into the face of death. It is interesting to observe that wherever the story-teller is fighting for a principle, he sees no horror in war or death. It is only where he thinks of his individual suffering, where his thoughts are of his own physical self, that he complains.

And there is even humor in these stories; we see men laughing at death; we see the wounded smiling and