Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-01-14
FLASHLIGHTS ON
THE GREAT WAR
BY j. Howard Vert

i lHe war now CONFUSING Europe,
and so many nations have become
involved that the usual methods of
naming wars cannot be applied to it.
1t may pass into history as the Great
War; for it certainly surpasses. in the
number of men engaged and in losses
of life, any contest of the past which
has desecrated earth's surface.
A Senseiess Censorship
Almost the first thing that strikes
the observation of the keen historical
student is a rigid censorship, that
would be ludicrous in many of its
manifestations were it not frequently
so annoying. With the advances of
science which have rendered possible
the instantaneous transmission of news
over thousands of miles of space it is
perfectly proper for q belligerent to
take precautions not needed in past
wars to prevent news of army and
navy movements reaching the enemy.
But much of the censorship of the
present war has been so farcical and
senseless that it appears much like a
continuous performance of a comedy
or errors put up by corps of marti-
nets robcd in a little brief authority
In England there has been much criti-
cism of some of the features of this
censorship.
All Wars Essentially Alike
Yet, despite the laundering censor
ship, enough leaks through by means
OF various channels, in the way of tales
OF human interest, to show us that
wars are essentially the same in every
land and every age.
True, the horrors of destruction of
life have been intensified by recent in
ventions such as ships of the air hurl-
To ha,, 1. I.
ana mines in the ocean and artillery
on land of power never before used.
But, omitting these special features
one well versed in the history and
minutiae of our Civil War of half
century ago can see in every narration
OF battlefield horrors, or heroism, of
strategy and tricllery to outwit the foe
in every story of daring or pathos,
parallel or prototype that can be
cited from our own annals. A COM
parlson of some of these will form a
portion of this and of some succeeding
papers glancing in a flsh-lilIe manner
at the tales of human interest that
nave come to us from the European
shambles. Human nature is very much
AKIN the world over. as will be shown,
from time to time, in these papers.
In the Trenches
We have all read of the sufferings of
the soldiers in both the allied and Ger
man armies on the western battle
front. And yet it is but a repetition of
the life in trenches, bombproofs and
caves that was the lot of thousands of
soldiers, North and South, in the cam
paign at Nicksburg and many other
points. The writer's mind reverts to
the winter in front of beleaguered Pc
tersburg, where the armies of Lee and
Grant confronted each other for
months in earthworks, redoubts and
trenches, often within speaking dis
tance. Every inch of ground was bat
tied for again and again, and. as soon
as few feet of advance were gained
by hard fighting or by stealth and
trickery, pick and spade were speedily
piled to make the position more Sc
cure.
But three days ago an account was
published of a trick played on the Ger
mans at one point in the extended
battle line by the One Hundred and
IWenty-siNth Regiment of French in
fantry. 1t had been planned, on a GER
tam night, to raid and capture the op-
posite German trench "a distance of
only twenty yards intervening. But
the new fallen snow and the bright
moonlight made the execution of the
plan almost impossible until cor
poral conceived the scheme of having
the men draw their white shirts on
over their outer clothing so that they
could crawl over the snow without be-
ing detected.
After reading the above [ could not
help propounding a few mental oues-
tons. How in the name of all that is
reasonable did the French soldiers
manage to have snow-colored shirts in
those dirty, muddy trenches? No mag
nifylnS glass of even extraordinary
power could ever have discovered
white shirts in the trenches of Peters,
burS, and ! presume French clay is
Just as much foe to white apparel as
is that of Virginia.
My second query was, What kind of
eyes did those Germans have if, with
a bright moonlight, they could not see
body of men wriggling over the
ground less than twenty yards away?
| am very certain, had we tried n
wiggle waggle trick of that character
on the Johnny Rebs" who faced us
in front of Petersburg they would have
bored us so full of holes that we would
never again have paruaken of hard
tack and black coffee
L find good many stories of this
European war filtering through that
don't sing true, that look as il Mum
chausen was alive again and retelling
his tales for the benefit of the gullible.
But let that pass. Whether this par
ucular story is true or not, there have
been tricks innumerable on both sides
III InOSe european trenches; and
never read one of them but something
similar is recalled from the expert
ences of those long, cold winter months
in the Petersburg trenches. There
comes vividly before me q tall, lank
soldier from Michigan who would
spend whole day compromising some
ingenious pyrotechnical display to be
sent up from the trenches in the silent
hours of the night in the hope that
some incautious Southerner would ele-
Vate his head from the opposite trench
long enough to be a mark for a Michi-
gan bullet.
And we did not have all the tricks
to ourselves either The Southern sol
diers were very apt pupils. Grant
thought to deplete the Confederacys
supply of firearms by paying each de-
serter who brought his gun with him
a good price for it. In the dusk of a
Saturday morning numerous gray-clad
men were seen leaping through an old
corn field between the two lines call
ing out, Don't shoot, Yanks, we are
deserting." The tricks worked ner-
fectly a moment later the alleged