The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-07-10
Lucian S. Kirtland, in Leslie's.

A Verdun the heavily massed Ger
 "A man charges have most often ( A been made by fresh troops, ad- vancing from comparative safety to meet the sudden, merciless sweep of the French machine guns. When Lord North cliffe publisher of the Daily Mail and the London Times, returned from visit to the front at Verdun, he said in his account of the bayonet charges of the German troops that the men were "drug enthused. I had heard it so decidedly mans before drives that I interviewed him concerning his authority for the statement. He said that his authority was the words of the German prisoners themselves. He had talked personally with a half a hundred within an hour after their capture. These men had Ge- clared that they had been given ether mixed with some other gas and that the effect was a wild, enthusiastic abandon lasting for an hour and a half or two hours.
 However this may be, the mind has re- course to certain projections against con ditions which normally could not be en- dured. The callouses which the mind is able to put on, are within the realm of known experience, but nevertheless war calls out strange variations. In war such as it had been known in the past, the reliance of the commander that his troops would hold their morale under fire was based on his faith in discipline. Dis "a in the present war. but certain some thing else is also needed to supply an anesthesia to the mind under the rigors of the new terrors. This is the battle- field madness which the highly sensi- tive modern man seems to be able to put on like a cloak.
 The British fighting stock in particular seem to be able to achieve the prophy- tactic of madness to save themselves from madness. In fact, German prison CTS have said that the Kaiser's troops believe that the British nave gone quite mad and that they are not resting in any intermediate inferno of lunacy. Several British officers have expressed 1t to me that if anyone should be suddenly whisked from normal surroundings to the front trenches during a prolonged heavy shell fire that the most terrifying part of the experience would not be the dan ger and the appalling roar of the guns nor the maelstrom of death, but the sud- den realization of the safeguarding mad ness which can buoy up the human nina by it's anesthesia to endure. It is not the whistling and singing of the shells which chills deepest to the marrow, but the whistling and singing of the men. waiting, waiting.
 There is stark calmness about the wildness of it. The English Tommy is not a musician of the first order by tradition. His whistling is passible, hss singing such as 1t is, but the playing of the countless mouth organs is su- premacy of torture for the musical Ger mans to hear across the field. German prisoner after German prisoner has said that when the British troops are in the mood of laughing, singing. whistling harmonica- playing madness. and in that mood leap from their trenches for the bayonet charge. the madmen carry with them a terror which is more appalling than poison gas or liquid fire.
 This protective coating of temporary
 madness to preserve the mind from starl