“’In our battalion three iron crosses have been given.  Let us hope that we shall be the lucky ones the next time.

“’During the first two days of the battle I had only one piece of bread and no water.  I spent the night in the rain without my greatcoat.  The rest of my kit was on the horses, which have been left miles behind with the baggage and which cannot come up into the battle because as soon as you put your nose up from behind cover the bullets whistle.

“’War is terrible!  We are all hoping that a decisive battle will end the war.  Our troops already have got round Paris.  If we beat the English the French resistance will soon be broken.  Russia will be very quickly dealt with; of this there is no doubt.

“’We have received splendid help from the Austrian heavy artillery at Maubeuge.  They bombarded Fort Cerfontaine in such a way that there was not ten meters of parapet which did not show enormous craters made by the shells.  The armored turrets were found upside down.

“’Yesterday evening about 6, in the valley in which our reserves stood, there was such a terrible cannonade that we saw nothing of the sky but a cloud of smoke.  We had few casualties.’

TELEPHONE AN AID TO SPIES

“Espionage is carried on by the enemy to a considerable extent.  Recently the suspicions of some of the French troops were aroused by coming across a farm from which the horses had been removed.  After some search they discovered a telephone which was connected by an underground cable with the German lines, and the owner of the farm paid the penalty in the usual way in war for his treachery.  “After some cases of village fighting, which occurred earlier in the war, it was reported by some of our officers that the Germans had attempted to approach to close quarters by forcing prisoners to march in front of them.  The Germans have recently repeated the same trick on a larger scale against the French, as is shown by the copy of an order issued by the French officials.  It is therein referred to as a ruse, but if that term can be accepted, it is a distinctly illegal ruse.

REFERS TO RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

“Full details of the actual damage done to the cathedral at Rheims will doubtless have been cabled, so that no description of it is necessary.  The Germans bombarded the cathedral twice with their heavy artillery.

“One reason it caught fire so quickly was that on one side of it was some scaffolding which had been erected for restoration work.  Straw had also been laid on the floor for the reception of German wounded.  It is to the credit of the French that practically all the German wounded were successfully extricated from the burning building.

“There was no justification on military grounds for this act of vandalism, which seems to have been caused by exasperation born of failure—­a sign of impotence rather than of strength.”