Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1915-06-08

dered to "find the German battery and |
silence it." With the long fingers of |
their shells, the British artillery had
felt out the German guns and had stop |
ped the German tornado. Whether the |
German guns had been blown up or
whether they had stopped firing in or
der to hide their whereabouts from
the British battery, was not known. But
thu point was that they had stopped. /
began to understand as we sped out of
this town, why the Beigians l meet re-
yer Sir Jonn French g soldiers, the men
who batter Germany.
How is the man whose jaw was shot
away" / asked the doctor. His long
nimble surgeons fingers were opening
the tin can with a jack knife.
"Pretty bad, " he said. He was sit
ting up in bed, sapping away at the
lower half of his face, with blood all
over everything"
Gle . an old Belgian merchant" he
added. "Lived here all his life, with
everything quiet and peaceful until this
morning. He can t live"
He didn't curse the Germans. Per
haps he knew what the girl and the
Canadian hadn't known, the weakness
of words
Our auto, after an hour S run, stopped
at the foot of hill. The firing had
sounded nearer and nearer as we went
along.
Gwen run up this hill and see how
it looks, said the doctor, owe can see
the whole British front line from
here" Ten minutes later we were on
the top.
"There's Ostend, said the doctor,
"and the English channel. You can see
the white line of the surf. Here s
Ypres and here's Armentieres. ."
There before us stretched sixty miles
Of battle line. And, on fifteen miles Of
it, the fiercest and greatest battle in the
history of warfare was being fought be-
tween the British and Germans. 1t was
the first day Of the new summer war.
The deep roar of u hundred storms
throbbed in the air, We tried to take
in the view and it's vast significance in
one general survey. 1t was impossible;
clouds of smoke, here and there; the
thunder of guns. The eyes and ears
took them in but it was so vast that
my mind remained unmOved; it couldn't
respond to such u tremendous stimulus.
Men were dying in that landscape, |
knew. Others were fighting like devils;
human life, down on that great plain,
was being quoted at zero; it was being
given away, free, Down there on those
checkered farms, along those canals; in
the groves, on the roads men were kill
ing with might and main.
"This is the war between Great Brit.
ain and Germany that novelists used to
, write about and people used to poohl
> poohl y said the financier, as he looked
over the landscape with his glasses. He
had gotten little bit of the vastness
of the scene into his words
1t was not until we began to pick out
various points and keep our eyes fixed
y on them that the sense Of the vastness
= of il all reached me. 81 wonder if l
: can understand what it.means if l look
Il at Ypres alone, " | calculated to myself.
3 Ypres, u few miles away from us
l. was, at first, the most fascinating point,
J. In the sunshine the tall run of the
h Cloth Hall tower cleaned almost white.
J; When | had been in it week before 1t
II had been only time stained wreck. We
could see white puffs burst into view
z around it. They were shrapnel shells;
IS they were playing a tattoo on the city.
IS Two church spires stood up in the sun.
lc shine; the shrapnel clouds played about
d them, also, Below these three peaks of
IS masonry floOted a sea of white smoke;