comrades; it is against
orders. We have to go on regardless of losses. My own best comrade was
struck down by my side. I heard his cry and saw him lying there with
blood oozing through his coat. My heart wept to leave him. He wanted me
to take his money, but I just kissed his hand and went on, I suppose he
died, for I could not find him when we retreated."

[Illustration: Where the Armies are Contending in Alsace-Lorraine.]

[Illustration: GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS NICHOLAIEVITCH
The Russian Commander-in-Chief. _
(Photo (C) by Underwood & Underwood._)]

[Illustration: GEN. RENNENKAMPF
The Russian General Who Was Removed by the Grand Duke
[Transcriber: photo credit ineligible]]

Another French soldier lay wounded at the edge of a wood ten miles from
Luneville. When he recovered consciousness he saw there were only dead
and dying men around him. He remained for two days, unable to move his
shattered limbs, and cried out for death to relieve him of his agony. At
night he was numbed by cold; in the day thirst tortured him to the point
of madness. Faint cries and groans came to his ears across the field. It
was on the morning of the third day that French peasants came to rescue
those who still remained alive.

There have been several advances made by the French into Lorraine, and
several retirements. On each occasion men have seen new horrors which
have turned their stomachs. There are woods not far from Nancy from
which there comes a pestilential stench which steals down the wind in
gusts of obscene odor. For three weeks and more dead bodies of Germans
and Frenchmen have lain rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The
peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work
to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with
corruption, where plague and fever find holding ground.

I have said that this warfare on the frontier is pitiless. This is a
general statement of a truth to which there are exceptions. One of these
was a reconciliation on the battlefield between French and German
soldiers who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blamont.
When dawn came they conversed with each other while waiting for death. A
French soldier gave his water bottle to a German officer who was crying
out with thirst. The German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of
the man who had been his enemy. "There will be no war on the other
side," he said.

Another Frenchman, who came from Mon