Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1918-10-12
IA LETTER FROM. THE
 THICK OF THE FIGHT
Somewhere in France,
 Aug. IS, 1918

Somewhere in France,
 Aug. IS, 1918 My Dear Billiken:-
 I mailed you a German helmet last week, which you should get about the time this letter reaches you, because there is no congestion going west. As the game progresses I may run against other souvenirs that will in terest you. This country is so full of Junk no what it looks like the wreck of the Universe, or some world that had been used for a few ages as a cosmic dumping ground. When you do answer, I wish you'd tell me how -, your relative, is getting on with his aviation stuff, and if he has been lucky enough to escape destruction thus long. He may be flying over my head any day and every day, and I not know it, because we don't see much of the aviators personally, or know who they are unless we just hap pen to run into one. One thing I do know, and that is that we need about 10000 of them. Fritz is altogether too gay in the air, and it needs lot more of our aviators to puncture his bag of tricks and block his frightful- ness game. The sooner this can be done, the quicker will be the end. His planes are very pestiferous, but man for man the allies are the superior fliers, and with anywhere near as many planes, we Americans could keep him on his side of the line, and do much raiding in his interior country. You will see, when we get little stronger in the air, that it will be "cuckoo" for a lot of the rough stuff he is putting over now. I think, be- yond a doubt, they have lost their best man when Capt. Richtofen was bag ged. Of course one swallow less does not necessarily dissipate a gay sum- mer, but such important birds do count in any flock.
 I suppose you hear lot of silly bunk at home about the German peo- pie not having any heart for this war; that it is all the Kaiser, etc. Of course there are few-a hopeless minority, who see the whole miserable mess in it's true light, but the bulk of them are simply mad with the idea, monomani- acs in fact, and that idea is nothing more or less than Germanic dominion of the world, actual and commercial, and those who have not been bitten with the bug have swallowed the mon- strous lie that the war was forced" on them, and that now they are fighting for their lives and their existence; in which latter case the argument rests on more solid foundation, because, mindful of Belgium, and nameless and innumerable atrocities, committed by the said meek, humble Heines and Fritzes, the joyous Allies are going to them with an ardent enthusiasm that leaves little to be desired, and they are getting copious doses of their own medicine; for while the Americans will not stoop to the utter. barbarism of the boches, the delicious fact is that they take few prisoners. Prisoners are too much trouble to care for. It keeps too many of us up nights, guarding them; then eventually they would get back and start the breed going again, and presently careless and indifferent old history would re- peat itself again.
 Even as I write, with thousands of shells in anxious competition to light and bite, I can heaf very plainly the line of Democracy's big dogs barking out their message, and every time one barks he bites, and often bites deep and final. There are many less of Heine and Fritz now than there were when I began this letter, and when you receive it there will be still less; and we are hot escaping, we are pay ing the price. Our boys lie buried all around us here, and, fragments of shell and wreckage of every descrip- tion disfigure the landscape on every side: for here was fought, very re- gently, one of the stages of the bat tie that save Paris ,and at the same time will doubtless spell the Kaiser's Waterloo when it is finished! Be- cause, when it began, he was danger ously close to Paris, and now after three weeks he is beyond the Marne, looking for good jumping places to jump the Aisne, and has scouts out looking fo the best places to jump the next river-the Vesle. The Allies give him no rest night or day, and when at last the great hammer of Thor ceases whaling him he will be across the Rhine in a straight-away dash for Berlin.
 Now for the point and pith of my song;-use all of your talent and might of persuasion with everyone you talk to, to carry on to the uttermost limit in this game, and never think of ,,-%;I D,,,eeio picro io cyu1ch-