The Coconino sun., 1918-10-04

ohu tlIHe. 1Ou InlRnL even send me
 copies of the Gazette. If you wish,
 you may send these sketches to
 Harvey and Charlie. If you wish them
 returned, they would probably be
 obliging in this regard.
 ' August 23, 1918.
 My Dear Father:
 We are roasting in France today;
 wishing that we could take a bath,
 and wondering when we go into the 1 line again. Active war is an amazing
 spectacle; the blasts of artillery, the
 put-put-put of machine guns, the
 crack of rifles, these physical and ob-
 jective circumstances are stupendous
 enough to leave an impression for a
 life time. The mere magnitude of the
 thousands of shells fired. the tens of
 thousands of bullets that whistle through the air throw individual per
 spective out of its true proportion, and
 leave one quite unable to be surprised
 by smaller events. You shall not have
 to wait long before I will give long
 account of the great battle, which I
 believe is Gettysburg for the German.
 Like Lee after Meade's victory, he is
 still strong, but the clements of init
 iative, surprise and offense have for
 ever passed from his control to the
 hands of his adversaries.
 am copying few more of the
 notes l made sometime ago:
 Our t,apch rathar n,,,- n,~Dhoxl,
 ment, was in time of peace a railroad
 bed, about IF feet deep, and at its base
 between twelve and fourteen feet wide. At the top of the embankment are, at intervals of fifteen yards, small lookout posts which accommodate two
 men. During the day only a few of these posts are manned. At night, however, we all turn out and keep watch for the Boche until daybreak. All through the watch there is kept up by each side lively machine gun fire; occasionally there is rifle fire and some grenade throwing, generally when someone believes there is Boches in the wire, or is trying to approach the wire. The more seasoned troops are, l am told by our French com rades, the less indication the infantry gives of it's position by needless fire Just as old troops are careful to con ceal themselves from airships, and to observe all caution against aiding the enemy by making useless noise, both in the trenches and when on patrol. have been told that division from the mountain parts of some of our south ern states have paralyzed the enemy by their utter disregard for methods of combat which have stood three years of assault and offense. They seem to be a wild sort, for they raid No Mans Land with no orders, they disregard all military courtesy, fight among themselves. They are reputed to have raided, with no artillery prep aration whatever, and unbeknownst to their officers, German trench. When they had arrived at their objective the enemy had retreated, and the Ameri- cans then staged free-for-all among themselves. This all sounds pretty fishy, but it's good stuff for the imag- ination-we'd all like to be reckless heroes; that is the kind of heroes bull lets don't hit.
 During our occupation of this sec tor we are closely associated with the French; this happy circumstance has given me added opportunity to ob serve their character. They lack the prominent and outstanding character istics of the Germans, that is uniform ly clean homes. Go into a Boche house. hold and you find the floors swept; the dishes washed, the beds made. This capacity for order schedule and meth cd is not always so conspicuously dis played by the French. And it may be, because of their love of freedom, of dash, vivacity, of their rebellion against the tedium of things precisely and methodically done that they enjoy | such spiritual mental and social supe- riority over their enemy. The German is thorough scientist, because he is | slow; the Frenchman is an under standing scientist, because he sees in | one brilliant flash of insight what | other people comprehend only after the painful expenditure of much time and energy. The French, by their spirit, by the rapidity and scope of their faculties, by their capacity to adopt themselves to all sorts of ex- tremes, have built up body of poetry second only to the English, and have contributed to the world prose, the quality of which is unapproached in excellence by the prose of any modern people.
 The character of the Frenchman is often assailed. We remember how uni it used to be agreed that he was frivolous, immoral, incapable of fastening his attention to anything long enough to see it's real truth, that he lived on arts and objects, that he was mere server of ends to insure his immediate pleasure. My belief is that the world has interpreted wrong y the simplest phenomenon of the French character-that is, the force and direction which goes to develop fife to its highest point, makes the pleasures of life fine and abundant, points the way to truth, insures to the stranger and to the friend of years alike a warm hand, and sincere and heart. His frivolity has been mistaken for love of joy and gaiety, immortality for frankness, his ,ocalled devotion to passing pleasures