The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-21

"HE publisher of a recent book upon hospital service during the Euro
 - pean war printed the statement war has been written by persons who
 had had no previous experience as
 writers but whose impressions were so vived that the mere artless recording of them eclipsed the work of accomplished literati.
 A young American who served a year in the trenches; a New England barber who chanced to be in Canada when war was declared, and enlisted for the sake of adventure, writes graphically, in an article published by the St Louis Post Dispatch, of his year in the trenches fin daily dread of bullet, shrapnel, mine and deadly gas, and in nightly fear of mine and gas-and the man-eating rats" His story illustrates fairly the observation of the publisher of many books upon the war, by professional and nonprofessional authors.
 "Once I saw a poor wretch, weary of the trenches, raise his right arm full length. He was sent home, maimed and in agony, as he wished. And who can say that his act was cowardly?* * He had courage to raise his hand. Per hapse some who cfung to the mud at the bottom of the trench were greater cow ards"
 What more vivid picture of trench war fare has been made in a few sentences?
 'Lapointe looked over the trench, and
 nobody knows what he saw. His brother
 was there to lay him down. He buried
 him."
 :" * A German shell exploded over
 a pile of brush in a field near wnere was shooting toward the German line. And we, weary of the monotony of fight ing, were overjoyed to see the ground covered far and wide with potatoes, which some farmer had hidden under hay Potatoes! We blessed our periscope for the toothsome vision. And, marve- lous to relate, we noted that the German fire slackened. Our officers could not restrain the French Canadians. On our bellies, over the death line, we crawled unscathed, and flat on the ground, wrig- gled to the potatoes, raving death for. what we deem so common in America. T got my share. The Germans held their fire while we gathered the crop we did not plant.
 Toward night. in the e-dusk. we discov- cred by our periscope that the German boys, who were cold in their trenches, were demolishing house for firewood, an old cottage, the property, perhaps, Of that very peasant who had hidden our potatoes under the hay. We had their lives in our hands. We remembered our Irish feast-and word went down the line to holc our fire. Nor did one German die.
 That was the Golden Rule of the bat | tlefront.
 q slept in my blanket, my first night
 under fire. with clump of cheese at my | feet. as bribe to the rats to spare my face. Not that I slept much. The night rocked with sound. The night is the true time for fighting, and the wire cutters were creeping about on their dangerous errands between the trenches. The rockets now and then hissed skyward. throwing their powerful flares of light over the darkened world. Wounded men groaned. And rats, like flies in summer, scuttled about. making queer noises,
 which we could hear in momentary lulls.
 q" Our engineer had mined the place, and as we fled the Germans poured down, gray horde of men. So we blew them up.
 | Have you ever seen thousand men
 hurled to atoms by giant blast? can
 not forget that awful sight. The whole earth seemed to leap skyward, ana through and through the black mountains of earth and stones shot heads and arms
 and legs torn fragments of what were once heroic men.
 "The routine of trench life was broken
 once month by our four precious days l of rest How we looked forward to those 1 four days, and how we grumbled and swore, if some untoward circumstances deprived us of them. We usually went to some nearby village, about two miles l from the firing line. But some poor
 wretches preferred to remain in the | trenches-because when they were two miles away, they had to get up between | and in the morning, shine their shoes,
 clean their uniforms, polish their but i tons, go on long walks and be inspected | by august generals. And that is worse than being in. the trenches, they thought
 We used to talk back and forth jthose German boys and we Canadians. They were the 157th and most friendly. Hi! where do you come from? voice
 in French once called over to us.