| Chapter 1 |
The Price of War As we continued on our march there were telephone poles and wires which had been cut and torn by German shells. Here and there trees bore evidence of being struck heavily by shrapnel, while many of them were cut in half. What was once a beautiful and peaceful French town now appeared a ruin of crumbling walls and shell-torn roofs. As I passed through the silent streets of Chateau Thierry - a land of my noble ancestry - now a "land of ruins - a land of memories" - l thought of my father, whose boyish feet had trodden many times the very ground on which I stood! As we marched on, scattered here and there were hundreds and hundreds of graves, each marked with a red, white and blue circle, graves of our boys who had fallen in the defense of France! I gazed at the names of the heroes and wondered if such was destined to be my fate, to occupy just a few feet of France's soil! They were heroes - yes, every one of them, but the world would never hear of them individually. Their glory would only sleep the sleep of the dead! I thought of their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers - of a dear one, perhaps, still waiting their return! Here there was no sign of animal life, all was death, destruction, desolation -- the deplorable price of war! Here again where once stood a grand castle now loomed up before us a mass of ghastly ruins! Nay, the Huns had carried their hideousness even further. Grand edifices of worship, costly cathedrals, the abode of God Himself, were masses of shell-torn ruins! Windows were smashed to pieces, Crucifixes and priestly robes lay buried in the dirt while the sacred Tabernacle itself lay open to public gaze! This was the price of war – so grim, so terrible, so inhuman, so dearly paid. 'Tis the memory of such, of the sinking of the Lusitania, of the bitter anguish and sufferings throughout the almost impenetrable forest of Argonne, of the outraged French and Belgians that cry out for reparation - a reparation that no man may pay. |