The Spectator., 1914-12-15
Wounded Respond to Cry of Raw
 ing Comrade.
Correspondent Pens Vivid Description of the Horrors of War-Life in the Trenches a Continuous
 Nervous Tension.
By GABRIEL DElAGARDE.

! Correspondent of Chicago Daily News)
 Amiens, France.-There are four of us in the quiet garden smoking our pipes. What is it-a French attack, or a German? Somewhere around Chaulnes, 30 kilometers away, the cannon are laundering furiously. A sullen, uninterrupted growing passes over Amiens. Now and then we can distinguish the more powerful shots of the big guns, some of which we saw passing through here. In any case things are warming up out there. All day the battle will continue, and we shall suffer the anguish of not knowing what is happening. Are the Germans piercing the French lines? Are the French piercing the German?
 All around Amiens it has been thus for a month. The same villages have been fought for, the same positions taken and retaken. In some places the unburied bodies of men and ami mals are so numerous that French and Germans alike have withdrawn from these shambles, which war has made accursed and uninhabitable.
 This is the case, for example, at Rove. little town of three to four thousand inhabitants, of which the official statements have spoken often. To find and remove the dead one has to search the cellars, go down into wells and explore crumbling ruins of masonry. A rough Parisian fireman, a brave veteran of many fires, told me that he would rather risk his life every day in burning building than pursue this new trade to which he has been assigned. The men engaged in it are unable to continue more than two days at time-no human being could stand it longer.
 But if it is hard for trained fire men, imagine the sensations of this old rural notary public, calm and peaceful, who went to visit the ruins of his house in Alert, descended into the cellar and there in the darkness ran against a body winch swung to and fro. It had been there 15 days. He had to take it down and bury it
 
 the inhabitants who had :lled him. self during the bombardment evident ly from terror.
 The number of suicides in the northern provinces is countless. The newspapers may say nothing about them, but the people know, and here in the peaceful garden my com panions continue to converse of these gruesome undercurrents of the war.
 Such horrible details could never have been imagined. It is not the dead who suffer, but the living-the men, for instance, who come back from their stay in the trenches with levers and diseases. There are sev- eral here in the hospital who have been delirious for days. Last night in the long white room where the flames of watchlights flickered feebly a wounded sergeant suddenly rose from his cot.
 "On guard! On guard!" he cried Its warming up over there. Fix bayonets, boys!"
 Under the impulsion of the familiar words of command half delirious men all over the room staggered to their feet and rushed among the cots in their nightshirts, stumblin. and shouting. The attendant who told me this still vas visibly affected by the scene, He had had the happy in spiration to commands:
 "Ha1tf Rest armctn
 And the mad brigade had obedi-