You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Friday October 9, 1914
From the International Socialist Review: Notes on the War from a French Soldier
The October issue of the International Socialist Review contains several articles on the war now consuming much of Europe, as well as discussions concerning the role played by the Socialists of the various countries involved. From among these articles, we choose to feature a report from a French soldier who gives us a front-row view of the human cost of war:
MANY times was Charleroi taken from us and regained only after the most severe fighting. Sometimes it seemed to me that we were hurling our bodies against a solid and immovable wall that spat flame and death into our faces.
The streets of the town are narrow and we were at all times at such close quarters that our movements were impeded. We had one advantage over the Germans here, however. We were better able to move about and bring our guns into play than they were. Our weakness became our strength. Being few in numbers, we did not so greatly hinder one another. The shots of the Germans often felled their own men.
At the beginning of the attack hundreds of Germans were swept down and soon these numbers swelled to thousands who fell as they charged. And more were always falling. Many of our own boys were killed or injured and we could not stop to give them a single thought. We were battling for our own lives, to retake what we had lost or hold out against the German attacks.
Perhaps you think sometimes of the horror too horrible to be true, of the tragedy that occurred elsewhere, but can never reach the safety of your own home, or the catastrophe that swooped down in the land across the border, so terrible that it seems to you like nothing upon this earth but an uncanny nightmare of horror.
The fighting in the streets of Charleroi will remain always in my mind as a hazy dream of cataclysmic madness, the most awful fear I have ever known—come true—before my very eyes, surrounding me on all sides!
As in the clutch of a swirling insanity, we felt ourselves struggling and trampling upon the writhing bodies of our fallen comrades to maintain our own footing, until there remained only a crushed and oozing mass beneath our feet. A strange moaning assailed our ears and the stench that arose from the bodies of the dying almost overcame us.
Later, from the steps of a church, I saw the Germans still pouring into the narrow streets. They were fighting and screaming. Many dropped as they advanced. Our guns slew whole rows of them, but the steady stream of men behind forced them into closer and closer quarters. At length the relentless pressure from behind became so great that men began to be crushed by it.
Still the shells poured forth, but the dead and the wounded did not fall. They were held rigidly upright by the solid mass of human madness. There was no chance for any retreat then. All were wedged in between stone buildings, trampling their comrades underfoot. Fighting arms tore at their neighbors as men struggled alike for breath and for terror of the flames of death which they faced.
One in a slate gray uniform, hit by a shell, with his brains bespattering his comrades, fell dead against their shoulders and was borne, upright and onward, with them by that irresistible pressure from behind.
After three hours the dead were breast high everywhere.
And what are we fighting for?
Also from the October 1914 Issue of the Review:
His Master: "You've done very well.
Now what is left of you can go back to work."
THE RED FEAST by A PAINT CREEK MINER
AYE, fight, you fools—you workers torn with strife.
And spill your steaming entrails on the field;
Serve well in death the men you served in life,
So that their wide dominions may not yield.
Serve well that flag—the lie that still allures;
Lay down your lives for land you do not own,
And give unto a war that is not yours
Your glory tithe of mangled flesh and bone.
Ah, slaves, you fight your master's battles well,
The reek of rotting carnage fills the air;
Your trampled bodies give forth fetid smell—
Sweet incense to the ghouls who sent you there—
A bloody mass of high heaped human woe
For hungry vultures hovering on high....
Black dogs, red muzzled, through the trenches go,
Where your wan, pallid features face the sky.
Go, stagger back, you stupid slaves who've "won,"
Back to your stricken towns to toil anew,
For there your dismal tasks are still undone.
And grim Starvation gropes again for you!
What matters now your flag, your race, the skill
Of scattered legions—were they not in vain—,
Once more beneath the lash you must distill
Your lives to glut a glory wrought of pain.
In peace they ever lash you to your toil,
In war they drive you to the teeth of death.
And even when your life-blood soaks the soil
They give you lies to choke your dying breath.
So will they smite your blind eyes till you see.
And lash your naked backs until you know
That wasted blood can never make you free
From utter thralldom to the common foe. .
Then you will find that "nation" is a name,
And boundaries are things that don't exist;
That workers' interests, world-wide, are the same.
And ONE the ENEMY they must resist!
----------
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 15
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, 1914
-Oct 1914 edition
(search with:
1. "October 1914" & choose p.195
2. "french scene" & choose p. 215
3. "Red Feast" & choose p.196)
http://books.google.com/...
See also:
"Battle of the Frontiers"
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
"Hellraisers Journal: What tyrant serene is directing unseen
his black-hearted cowards who kill...?" by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
When the Leaves Come Out
-by Ralph Chaplin (A Paint Creek Miner)
OH, 1917
https://archive.org/...
IMAGES
From Oct 1914, ISR, see link above
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
The Cruel War - Peter Paul and Mary
Tomorrow is Sunday, and Monday is the day
That your captain will call you and you must obey
Your captain will call you, it grieves my heart so
Won't you let me come with you? No, my love, no.
-Traditional
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````