ely along its
destined course that it seems for centuries to be at a standstill; but
there are also times when it rushes along at a giddy pace, covering the
track of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living in
now. Today we are waging the most devastating war that the world has
ever seen; tomorrow--perhaps not a distant tomorrow--war may be
abolished forever from the category of human crimes. This may be
something like the fierce outburst of winter, which we are now
witnessing, before the complete triumph of the sun. It is written of
those gallant men who won that victory on Monday--men from Canada, from
Australia, and from this old country, which has proved that in spite of
its age it is not decrepit--it is written of those gallant men that
they attacked with the dawn--fit work for the dawn!--to drive out of
forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had defiled it for
three years. "They attacked with the dawn." Significant phrase!

The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for centuries has
clouded the sunniest land in the world, the freeing of Russia from an
oppression which has covered it like a shroud for so long, the great
declaration of President Wilson coming with the might of the great
nation which he represents into the struggle for liberty, are heralds
of the dawn. "They attacked with the dawn," and these men are marching
forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and
Americans, British, Italians, Russians, yea, and Serbians, Belgians,
Montenegrins, will march into the full light of a perfect day.

THE FIRST TO FALL IN BATTLE

During the trench warfare, it was customary to raid the enemy trenches
at unexpected hours, sometimes during the night, often during "the
sleepiest hour," just before the dawn. In such a raid made by the
Germans in the early dawn of November 3, 1917, fell the first American
soldiers to die in the World War.

The Germans began by shelling the barbed-wire barrier in front of the
trenches where the Americans were stationed for a few days, taking
their first lessons in trench warfare. A heavy artillery fire was then
directed so as to cover the trenches and the country immediately back
of them. This prevented reinforcements coming into the trenches.
Following the barrage a large number of Huns broke through the barbed
wire and jumped into the trenches.

The Americans did not fully understand the situation, for it was their