The Alaska daily empire., 1914-12-30
IRWIN COBB TELLS
 VIVID WAR STORY


 NEW YORK, Dec 14.-Iryan SSCew. sbury Cobb. whose name will r Tit- ten on the blackboards tif they silll use theml Of schools ot journalism as the only man who over interviewed Lord Kitchener Of Khartoum and the only man from Paducah who ever wore wrist watch, was tho guest of honor Of tbe Green Room Club last night
 Some funny things Mr. Cobb told a reporter about how it gelt Go be a dinner guest in' New York, where @ere ] is always an open season for -banQueta mighC he recorded shara Eera it not for the possibility that Mr. Cobb, fol- towing tho custom og the oeason. would deny the authentlcacy of tho Inter view And anyway tho speech he made was deadly serious with just 9 dash of negro dialect stories for which he is justly famous.
 'tAll to whom talk about tho war sald Mfr Cobb. in closing the speech he made after the dinner. "ask mo about Belgium. I1 ! could write tho story Of Belgium as I saw it would crowd the Recording Angel out Of his Job"
 Word Picture of World'o torsoFa. -.
 If the speaker cared to repeat hig talk Of last night he could undoubted- ly crowd many professional lecturers out of their jobs, for it was burn. ing word picture Of the horrors Of war by a man whose training has been to observe facts and to relate them.
 "rhe difficulty in conveying any adequate impression of this war, in which one.half Of the world is fight ing the other half" caid Mir. Cobb ''is that lts lmmensity Is SO stagger- Ing that the human mind cannot grasp it and that the nearer one gets to it the more difficult it is to get any per spectlve of the whole. And then 1t is not at ali ike we have been taught '. in literature war is. 4 visit we made to the center of the German lines on the Aisne will illustrate this.
 "One Of the bis German batteries was stationed there ln a field. There were fivc 21-centimeter guns hidden beneath leaves and branches to dis guise them to teh aYiators Tho zoo or more mon in charge of the battery lived In huts in the rear. and when WIG arrived they were scattered in and around the huts writing letters, sleep ing smoking and playing the German national game oi pinochle.
 "A telephone rang The telephone, by the way, is one of the disillusion- izers Of modern warfare. Conc is the messenger who used 10 come stag- gering in in tho second act, bis shout ders covered with fuller's earth. The telephone is the modern messenger. It rang and the men put down their letters and their pipes and wearily manned their guns and placed great fourfoot shells in them.
 Phone Gallo Direct Firing
 We were warned to keep our mouths open. which was supernuous informa-N don for mo, and then Inc five guns turned sloose their deafenins roar and somewhere five or Reyen or nino miles over the tops oi lhe popleEs lhe im- mense saelis fell, mNyhe among Che enemy
 The men resumed their previoua occupations pntI another phone cal should send thom again Co thelr post ] talked to lho captain Of the battery 9 university man. He said that hs had been there for aeverai weeks during which time. although he had never been able Go soc ia sign Of iho enemy, hc had lost four of bis oin- cers C0 per cent ot his men andt many of his guns.
 "At tho Nord Station, iu Nauhauge, I