A wounded French soldier who was taken to Marseilles verified a remarkable story of his escape from death while fighting in German Lorraine.  The soldier owes his life to a small bust of Emperor William, which he picked up in a village school and placed in his haversack.  A German bullet struck the bust and, thus deflected, inflicted only a slight wound on the soldier.

Twenty German prisoners taken during the melee near Crecy, were herded together in a clearing, their rifles being stacked nearby.  In a rash moment they thought that they were loosely guarded and made a combined rush for the rifles.  “They will never make another,” was the laconic report of the guard.

SAYS DEAD FILLED THE MEUSE

Edouard Helsey of the Paris newspaper, Le Journal, reported to be serving with the colors, wrote under date of August 29: 

“It would be difficult to estimate the number of Germans killed last week.  Whole regiments were annihilated at some points.  They came out of the woods section by section.  One section, one shell—­and everything was wiped out.

“At two or three places which I am forbidden to name corpses filled the Meuse until the river overflowed.  This is no figure of speech.  The river bed literally was choked by the mass of dead Germans.  The effect of our artillery surpasses even our dreams.”

DETROIT ARTIST’S NARROW ESCAPE

Lawrence Stern Stevens, an artist of Detroit, narrowly escaped death near Aix-la-Chapelle at the hands of a crazed German lieutenant, by whom he was suspected of being a spy.

Stevens left Brussels on Aug. 24 in an automobile.  He was accompanied by a photographer and a Belgian newspaper correspondent, and his intention had been to make sketches on the battlefield.  His arrest at Laneffe thwarted this plan.  He underwent a terrifying ordeal at the hands of his demented captor, although he was not actually injured.

On the evening of Aug. 24 he was court-martialed and sentenced to death and held in close confinement over night.  Early on the morning of Aug. 25 he was led out, as he supposed, to be shot, but the plans had been changed and instead he was taken before Gen. von Arnim.  After being forced to march with German troops for two days, Stevens fell in with a party of American correspondents at Beaumont, from which point he traveled to Aix-la-Chapelle on a prison train, and eventually reached Rotterdam and safety.

SAD PLIGHT OF FRENCH FUGITIVES

M. Brieux, the noted French dramatist, who witnessed the arrival at Chartres of a train full of fugitives who had fled from their homes before the German advance, described his experience for the Figaro.  The fleeing people gathered round him and told him stories and he wrote his impressions as follows: 

“Children weep or gaze wide-eyed, wondering what is the matter.  Old folks sit in gloomy silence.  Women with haggard cheeks and disheveled hair seem to belong to another age.