The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1916-12-10

West Line Could Not Be Broken in 100 Years
:ss 's 70 S:sss % G.is = s New:
Ss"s s'ss s""ss ;s s had ss
BY WILLIAM BAYARD HALE
Author of Biography
On the Somme Battlefield Oct 49,
In other days you sometimes pleased to use my
You expressed confidence in the Ad
ity Of my observation a a reporter
Mr. President, wish might tell you little of what
for days have watched the epic struggle which since time
began has never been approached
One knows that battle but to see them die and
In numbers like these such deaths these and with such ut
that hard
men, dying in holes in the ground dying trees dy
ing in stables dying in railroad sidetracked in long trains
peace dying by scores in cottages school houses dying
dreds IN churches transformed into crowded hospitals dying
lying in the dirt their ghess eyes rolled up heaven
OF BRASS flies on their lips and in their gaping wounds
MEN SHOT TO PIECES
It Is quite true Mr. President Is no newspaper sensa
ton no romantic invention In consequence of the
thods OF warfare the character Of the wounds and
OF the deaths often indeed CHASTITY describe
quite impossible to imagine undescribed.
On both sides being shot into pieces Of papitat
Ing meat blown into separate parts of what hu
body being sted by poisonous gases incnerated by
liquid fire,
BY thousands the dreadful landscape which spreads
Itself before my eyes write these lines human beings
to wonder whether there is God above.
One knows that wounded in battle but actually
to see these specre Of Frenchmen English
men-crippled blinded Scared daformed famed MANNED
mutilated, that is hard, MIR. President
you could hear what fills my I write these words
might perhaps carry back to still evenings
the porch at Sea Grit when easery wind brought
the meadows the sound of breakers except that this sue
Of iron would deafen your to everything
Its own horror this thunder would stop the very pusaons
Of your heart with its of the pillows of agony beating
upon the shores of existence
MISERY ON ALL SIDES
you could what as write-this woeul desola
ton, this 1smaetish waste these stretching miles
stricken mtten forgotten Of God and by
could hear the tales told by French and English prs
side Of the fatal line think Mr. President there would be
question Of reactng" the greatest tragedy the
history Of men,
The voices Of all the angels mercy hover over
these bloody miles would not fail appeal The
tcuate murmurs Of the ghosy thousands who already lie
slain the mportunate pleadings thousands who still
await the Of death unless this horror of the aces
shall cease, would reach you
rememberit only in the presence grief 50 great
milar-I remember morningt Bermuda four wears
agwhen you in deep Of soul because you
had been asked to tell young of the death aged
relative It was but revelation Of many Of humanity
Of your heart.
ONE MAN HAS GREAT POWERS.
No shall tell mel viii listen to THAT it does
not ache tragedy gigantic piteous than anv
enacted while the world has rolled around No shall
tell unruked that your consciousness does react ia
the most gigantic fact in human history.
Is possible that it is today within the power of one man
to end this deous thing? Is possible that history
conved It's mysterious processes that lies in the hand
today to check this that the cur
rents Of world events today toward almost nconceiv
able opportunity that has come to Of the world
sPrax raE 3 that Nay
MENICAL GESTURE BEFORE WHICH THE TIRED AND
ToRKENTED REMNANTS OF THE HEROES OF THESE
Continued Fourteenth