Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1914-12-25
HOPELESS FOR ANY MAN TO ATTEMPT
To- DESCRIBE THE WAR; SAYS COBB
Is Too Big to Be Reported Words and the Writer Is Simply
Overwhelmed by the immensely Of -ost Appalling Scenes
Not Those of the Batt|efeds, But Of the Base Hospitals
NO Picturesqueness in the Struggle.

BY IRWIN 8. COBB,
Special War Correspondent Of the Sat
urday Evening Post.
New York.-Irvin Cobb, war CORE
spondent and humorist. has brought
back with him from the battlehelds OF
Belgium and northern France the
chief impression that it is hopeless
for any man to attempt to describe the
war. The English language cannot 90
1t, he says. nor any other language.
and 1t Is interesting to hear Cobb.
who is one Of the best reporters who
ever covered story, tell why this war
cannot be written.
I'VE have used up all our ad5ectives
on fivealarm fires, gang-murders, Slo-
cum disasters. political conventions.
Cobb said to q reporter of the New
York Evening Post. I'VE haven't got
anything left for such a war, and 1t
seems pitifully inadequate to fall back
on the stock phrases. It's too big to
comprehend. You start out In the
morning with the best intentions OF
grasping the facts of events and writ
ing a bully story, and you come home
in the evening dazed and brow-beaten.
There never has been anything like 1t.
Here you get a Gettysburg for break
fast, a Charlottesville for lunch.
Waterloo for supper, and. to make a
good measure. they throw in Sedan
around tea-time.
1T is simply impossible. for In
stance, to tell how a hundred thou
sand men died. You can't write 1t.
and the people who read it couldn't
realize the horror of it. They would
be too staggered, too amazed by the
proportions of the statement. What
you can do. though. is to pick out the
story of how one man died. and tell
that, making him typical Of the hum
dred thousand or che million or what.
ever the figures may be. As for cas-
ualties, I'm convinced they have been
much greater than any Of the com.
batants has admitted. I should not
attempt to guess them, because II
would be absurd to hazard q venture
In figures 90 large. You could only
approximate 1t by hundreds of thou
sands.
The Track Of an Army.
"One thing that impressed me wal
the way in which you become habitu
ated to the terrible side of war. The
first time saw Germans enter a cap
tured town, thrilled all over; the
first time l saw q dead soldier I felt
that I could write a whole story
around that one fact But after a little
time found that the most distressing
scenes Of ruin, death and desolation
made very little concrete impression
upon me. AS matter of fact, one
dead man Is a great deal more dis
tressing than several hundred or q
thousand. and the most appalling
scenes I witnessed were not those or
the battlefields. but in the base hos
pitfalls where poor chaps were dying
out of sound Of the guns.
Anyhow, the worst thing about q
battlefield isn't how 1t looks, but how
1t smells-the awful stencil of un
buried bodies, Of stale gunpowdel
fumes, of human sweat. of rottin(
corn. of damp, ruined houses. Tha
is the way ii affected me: Yet 1t Is re
markable how efficiently nature work.
to cover up the traces of war. visi
the same scene a few weeks later, ant
you'll find grass growing In the ruti
made by the cannon. new foliage
burgeoning on trees that were stripped
bare. and most of the disagreeabl,
traces of death removed. 1t takes yer!
little time for nature to obliterate tn,
track of an army.
Even so. however. am convince,
that the after-effects of this war will