The Washington herald., 1915-01-24
ONEP 6RANSx 1870

At that interesting juncture there az
rived on the field the first and foremost
of war correspondents. julius Caesar.
Caesar found the Teuton pushing the
! Celt back on the Roman provinCe-Or
| Pruvence-at the south. WhereupOn he
! himself plunged into the savage fray and
! fought his hardest fights on the very
| battlefields of this war of 1914
| He had easily conquered the Celtic
population, but the mighty Julius met
his match in the fervciOus Teutun. His
Commentaries open with the aCknowl-
edgment that the Belgae were the brav-
! est of the Gauls. LOng-haired, ragged,
and half-naked hut dwellers, they de-
spised any other toll than that OF battle
and coveted no other reward than the
! spoils of war.
And the Belgac are commonly believed
| to have been the lusty fOrbears OF the
German. Herman, or war man, the
most redoubted enemy OF Rome proudly
called himself. but philologists suspect
I that the Roman tongue was unequal to
the aspirate and therefore pronounced
II German.
Marching 145 miles in fifteen days. cross
ing the Marne and whirlinE through
Rheims, Caesar threw himself upon an
allied army of nearly 800 900 Teutons in the
first recorded Battle OF the Aisne, and
won the fight with his archers and sling
ers. Turning upon a second army. his
cavalry were arrested by saplnGs which
for want of barbed wire. the barbarans
! had bent across the road, interlaCing the
branches with bramble and brush. But
the Romans made their way through this
thiCket and fought the first recorded
battle on the banks of the Sambre.
There the combat grew so desperate
that Caesar had to snatch a buCkler
from a leGionary and himself go TO the
battle front to rally his panC-stricken
troops. Routing the enemy at last. he
had completed the conquest Of the cOun-
try of the Rhine.
In his ferocity toward the TeutonS.
however, the conquerer apparently adopt
I'd the view that the only good German
was a dead German and he perpetrated
upon the race the greatest atrOcity that
blOts the pages of history. BY an engi-
neering feat that we'll might be the envy
Of the mOderns, with all their bOasted
mechanical aids, he cut and sunk the
piles and laid a bridge across the Rhine
in ten days after which ne fell upon
helpless horde OF wretChed people and
butchered. We are asked to believe, no
fewer than $4,000 men, women, and chill
dren.
1000 Years of War.
Such was the first of the historic cam
patgnS that stained the earth in the
theater of the present war. Since thep
nearly every soldier of world renown has
battled there. All the great captains
have followed Caesar to that favorite
fitting ground of the warrior. Thither
nearly eco years afterward Attila came
with his Huns and was not turned back
until he was Overthrown at Chalons Sur
Marne. There Charlemagne Charles V
and Napoleon have fought, besides a
lesser host. including Charles the Bold,
Marshal SAKE, Turenne, Admiral Coligny,
Prince Eugene, Marlborough, Yelling
ton and Moltke.
The world today rightly is appalled, to
see the plains of Brabant, Flanders, and
Northern France smoking waste and to
hear the piteous outcry of the Belgian
people, starving, shelterless outcasts in
their own country. But full score Of
times in the past the same cruel fate
and worse has befallen those lands and
peoples gathered about that Vesuvius OF
hate and destruction.
For the center of this war. which has
yet lasted hardly more than 100 days was
also a center of the Hundred Years War.
of the Thirty Years War, the Seven
Years War. the War OF the Spanish Sue