The Washington herald., 1916-12-24
Christmas Day in Trenchesto
Breathe Spirit of Gods Peace

In the same trenches. Time goes on,
void and dull, their only Joy their meals
marking the rhythm Of life. The Boches
down below, cold gray-haired Landsturm.
walt as our men do In WEAKNESS. cold
and grief And they are hungry, their
food Is irregular and their bread Is bad.
Do you know, what our men did one
day when their soup was very >savoury
and the snow was whirling? They came
out boldly from their shelters and bonn
barded the poor Boches with loaves Of
bread, French bread, with sausages,
with cheese. And the Boches showed
their grinning faces with their mouths
very widely open so as to eat and laugh
at the same time. The officers-it was
one of them who told me about it.
threatened. There was no doubt about
the crime-feeding the enemy. They had
to acknowledge themselve helpless to
stop 1t.
"And the end of the story? One day
our men saw some Germans gliding from
their trenches coming forward, calling,
The mine! look out for the mine!' Our
men, without believing too much In what
they said, withdrew. and a moment after
the earth trembled rose up and crumpled
up half the trenches of our first line
This story-each soldier could tell one
like tt-proves that an indissoluble
brotherhood unites one army with an
other. Comrades in arms, they fight In
the same trench. They do not all
acknowledge 1t. because they are afraid
of the truth. They even excuse them
selves sometimes, as my offlcer did. who
added; You see they were old men.
We were very fond of them. The
younger men would never have done
what they did
Women Replace Men.
Beyond the daily slaughter, on each
side of this barrier of horror, made OF
heaped-up bodies, and Of living bodies
which suffer, there unrolls a great ex-
panse Of peaceful fields. of forests, OF
villages, Of towns crowned with smoke.
Everywhere is going on the same labor
of fruitful creativeness. And in Germany
as with us, women work to replace men.
and women watch by the hearth. From
Germany and France letters are sent
daily, tnclosed In canvas sacks, to the
soldiers. And II by chance the postbags
from Germany went a few yards too far
and fell in the French trenches, our SOL
diers would find once more, In another
language, the same regrets and the same
anxieties, they would recognize the same
infinite pity hidden by the same courage
the same despairing helplessness.
Soldiers know no hate. And because
they have heard on the battlefield the
wounded of the two camps cry out with
the same eternal 'Mother!' they forget
vengeance. The dying soldier forgives.
He knows that he who killed him did his
duty, the mere instrument of a force
which destroys. like himself. He prays
that his death may be the ransom of
other lives. Do not let our men who
return live with us in vain-let US believe
them, they who know the truth about
the war. They understand that revenge
would strike men like themselves, and
they remind US of the bond unbreakable
which exists between all women. Should
the soldier who has killed our son or
our husband suffer or die as we wish,
some woman like ourselves viii feel life
snatched from her. And the grief of this
poor woman will add all its weight to
our own grief, because this woman, this
German woman, is our sister,"