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THOMPSON U
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
Larry Laughlin
RECESSIONAL
VJOD of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line.
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget !
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire :
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget — lest we forget!
RUDYARD KIPLING
-o ^ir^^iTt-rijitr^
The Kaiser: "You See You Have Lost Everything.
The King of the Belgians : " Not My Soul."
(Reproduced by permission of the proprietors of Punch.)
LEST WE FORGET
WORLD WAR STORIES
BY
JOHN GILBERT THOMPSON
PRINCIPAL OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
FITCHBURG, MASS.
INEZ BIGWOOD
INSTRUCTOR IN CHILDREN S LITERATURE
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
FITCHBURG, MASS.
SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Copyright, 1918, by
SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY
3
PREFACE
Books and articles in astounding numbers have been
published in the past four years to explain the World
War and to inform the public as to its progress. Socie-
ties and agencies of the government have urged that
every available means be employed to inform the
American people of the reasons for the war and the
issues at stake ; and much has been done for adults.
Little or no thought seems to have been given to
^ youthful readers who are beginning to think for them-
^ selves, and whose first thinking should be properly
:j guided, for they are at an age when tales of heroism
rj and daring make a strong appeal. In many homes
^ the children are the only readers, and in nearly all,
-' their thinking and reading exercise a powerful in-
fluence.
This volume of stories of the World War is prepared
to meet this important need, and to set before the
pupils the war's unparalleled deeds of heroism, with
the aims and ideals which have inspired them, and
which have led American youth to look upon the sac-
rifice of life as none too high a price to pay for the
liberation of mankind.
V
345486
vi PREFACl^
It may be used as a reading book or as an historical
readiM- for tlie uppvv .grammar grades. While great
care has been employed to secure accurac}^ of fact
and to select material of permanent value, the stories
arc written in a manner that will appeal to children.
Tlic thanks of the authors and publishers are hereby
expressed to those wiio have kindly granted permission
to use copyrighted material.
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. The Shot Heard Round the World 1
2. A King of Heroes 20
3. The Defense op Liege 31
4. The Destruction of Louvain 38
5. Cardinal Mercier 43
6. And the Cock Crew . . . Amelia Josephine Burr 57
7. A Belgian Lawi'er's Appeal 59
8. Edith Cavell 61
9. Son Robert W. Service 66
10. The Case of Serbia .... David Lloyd George 68
11. The Murder of Captain Fryatt 71
12. Rupert Brooke 76
13. "Let Us Save the Kiddies" 81
14. The Charge of the Black Watch and the Scots Greys 91
15. The Battles op the Marne 94
16. The Queen's Flower 105
17. At School Near the Lines 108
18. A Place in the Sun 112
19. Marshal Joffre 119
20. The Hun Target — The Red Cross 129
21. "They Shall Not Pass" 140
22. Verdun Harold Begbie 146
23. The Beast in Man ......... 147
24. When Germany Lost the War . . New York Sun 155
25. Carry on ! Robert W. Service 162
26. War Dogs 165
viii
CONTENTS
PAOH
27.
'i'liK Heimiax Prisce
175
2S.
n.\HING THE r\DAR.\BLE
182
29.
Killing the Son
189
30.
The IUsslvn- Revolution
195
31.
A B.\LL.\D OF French Rivers
. Christopher Morley
207
32.
Bacilli ant) Bullets
209
33.
The Torch of \'alor
Sir Gilbert Parker
216
34.
Marshal Foch ....
223
35.
The Mexican Plot
228
36.
Why We Fight Geiulynt
Franklin K. Lane
242
37.
Gen-er.\l Pershing
245
3S.
The Melting Pot ....
252
39.
BiRDMEX
256
40.
Alan Seeger
271
41.
Can War Ever be Right? .
.
275
42.
What One American Did
293
43.
R.\EMAEKERS
.
301
44.
The God in Man ....
.
309
45.
In Flanders Fields . Lieutenant-
Colonel John McCrae
321
4r).
The World War
322
47.
Nations and the Moral Law
John Bright
343
LEST WE FORGET
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
ON April 19, 1775, was fired ''the shot heard
round the world." It was the shot fired for
freedom and democracy by the Americans at Lexing-
ton and Concord. In 1836, upon the completion of
the battle monument at Concord, the gallant deeds
of those early patriots were commemorated by Emer-
son in verse.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
This is not the only shot for freedom fired by
America and Americans. As President Wilson has
said, ''The might of America is the might of a sincere
love for the freedom of mankind." The shots of the
Civil War were fired for united democracy and uni-
versal freedom.
The soldiers and sailors of the United States fired
upon the Spaniards in the Spanish-American War,
1
2 LEST WK FORGET
that nil oppressed people might be released and given
an opiiort unity to live and work and grow in liberty.
That the Fili{)in()s, like the Cubans, might learn
to understand freedom, to safeguard it, and to use
it wisi^ly. has l)een the whole purpose of the United
States in aiding them.
On April 6, 1917, the shot was heard again. The
whole world had been listening anxiously for it, and
was not disappointed.
Those against whom the first American shot for
freedom was fired in 1775 have no\v become the strong-
est defenders of liberty and democracy. Their country
is one of the three greatest democracies of the world.
Shoulder to shoulder, the Americans and British fight
for the freedom of mankind everj^where. They fight
to defend the truth and to make this truth serve down-
trodden peoples as well as the mighty.
Indeed, President Wilson has wisely said, ''The
only thing that ever set any man free, the only thing
that ever set any nation free, is the truth. A man
that is afraid of the truth is afraid of life. A man
who does not love the truth is in the way of failure."
German}" has no love for the truth. The history
of the empire is strewn with broken promises and
acts of deceitfulness. America stands for something
different. It stands for those ideals which President
Wilson saw when he looked at the flag.
"And as I look at that flag," he said, ''I seem to
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 3
see many characters upon it which are not visible to
the physical eye. There seem to move ghostly visions
of devoted men who, looking at that flag, thought only
of liberty, of the rights of mankind, of the mission
of America to show the way to the world for the realiza-
tion of the rights of mankind ; and every grave of
every brave man of the country would seem to have
upon it the colors of the flag ; if he was a true Amer-
ican, would seem to have on it that stain of red which
means the true pulse of blood, and that beauty of pure
white which means the peace of the soul. And then
there seems to rise over the graves of those men and
to hallow their memory, that blue space of the sky
in which stars swim, these stars which exemplify for
us that glorious galaxy of the States of the Union,
bodies of free men banded together to vindicate the
rights of mankind."
At Mount Vernon, he said, in speaking of the work
of George Washington, ''A great promise that was
meant for all mankind was here given plan and reality."
So for the sake of many peoples of Europe who were
wronged, America has carried out that promise. When
honorable Americans promise, they would rather give
up life than fail to keep their word. But when the
Germans promise it means only ''a slip of the tongue,"
for this is also the meaning of the German word which
is translated '^ promise."
That the United States has to fulfill this special
4 Li:s'r WF. FORCIET
mission of drf(MKlini2; the truth is very clear. The
groat American leader said a^ain in behalf of his
people :
'*I suppose that from the first America has had
one pailicular mission in the world. Other nations
have grown rich, other nations have been as powerful
as we are in material resources ; other nations have
built up empires and exercised dominion. We are
not alone in anj^ of these things, but we are peculiar
in this, that from the first we have dedicated our
force to the service of justice and righteousness and
peace.
"The princes among us are those who forget them-
selves and serve mankind. America was born into
the world to do mankind's service, and no man is
an American in whom the desire to do mankind's
service is not greater than the desire to serve himself.
"Our hfe is but a little plan. One generation
follows another very quickly. If a man with red
blood in him had his choice, knowing that he must
die, he would rather die to vindicate some right,
unselfish to himself, than die in his bed. We are all
touched with the love of the glory which is real glory,
and the only glory comes from utter self-forgetfulness
and self-sacrifice. We never erect a statue to a man
who has merel}^ succeeded. We erect statues to men
who have forgotten themselves and been glorified by
the memorv of others. This is the standard that
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 5
America holds up to mankind in all sincerity and in all
earnestness.
''We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind,
if we can find out the way. We do not want to fight
the Mexicans; we want to serve the Mexicans if we
can, because we know how we would like to be free
and how we would like to be served, if there were
friends standing by ready to serve us. A war of ag-
gression is not a war in which it is a proud thing to
die, but a war of service is a thing in which it is a
proud thing to die."
The liberty-loving nations now fighting in the
World War desire that truth and freedom shall be
secured even to the Germans along with all other
peoples. If the Germans had possessed these price-
less virtues, probably no World War would have been
necessary. But the spirit of militarism has bound
down and deceived the German people.
President Wilson, at West Point, said : ''Militarism
does not consist in the existence of any army, not
even in the existence of a very great army. Militarism
is a spirit. It is a point of view. It is a system. It
is a purpose. The purpose of militarism is to use
armies for aggression. The spirit of militarism is
the opposite of the civilian spirit, the citizen spirit.
In a country where militarism prevails, the military
man looks down upon the civilian, regards him as
inferior, thinks of him as intended for his, the military
r Li:ST Wi: FOIUUT
man's sujiport and use, and just as long; as America
i> Amrrica that s])irit and point of view is imi)ossihle
witli us. 'riuMi' is as yet in this country, so far as 1
can discover, no taint of the spirit of militarism."
'r\\r pi>o|)K> of (Jerniany have <;iven up their sons,
l>aid enormous taxes which kei)t them jioor but made
landowners rich, all for the sake of the military whims
of their su])eriors.
Any American would sa}', like President Wilson,
"I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free
than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love
with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love
liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly
sets ever}' man free to do his best and be his best,
and that means the release of all the splendid energies
of a great people who think for themselves."
Thus, it is clear that America fights to serve. The
Germans fight to get, even as their word ''kriegen,"
used by them to mean ''make war," really means
"to get." For them, making war is never with the
idea of service, but with the idea of getting. They
desire many things for Germany, and to get them,
they have used the most brutal force. Not for a
moment would they stop to listen to the opinions
of mankind throughout the world.
President Wilson spoke with authority, when he
said: "I have not read history without observing
that the greatest forces in the world and the only
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 7
permanent forces are the moral forces. We have the
evidence of a very competent witness, namely, the
first Napoleon, who said that as he looked back in
the last days of his life upon so much as he knew of
human history, he had to record the judgment that
force had never accomplished anything that was
permanent. Force will not accomplish anything that
is permanent, I venture to say, in the great struggle
which is now going on on the other side of the sea.
The permanent things will be accomplished afterward,
when the opinion of mankind is brought to bear upon
the issues, and the only thing that will hold the world
steady is this same silent, insistent, all-powerful
opinion of mankind. Force can sometimes hold things
steady until opinion has time to form, but no force
that was ever exerted except in response to that opinion
was ever a conquering and predominant force."
By the opinions of mankind, he meant ideals, of
which he had already said: ''The pushing things in
this world are ideals, not ideas. One ideal is worth
twenty ideas."
Thus, in behalf of the great American nation, he
calls upon the young Americans of to-day to follow
the true spirit of their country. To them all he says,
''You are just as big as the things you do, just as
small as the things you leave undone. The size of
your life is the scale of your thinking."
When this great American president who believed
s i.i:sr w I". FoiiciT
that moral t\)rc(' was always «;reater than physical
forco and who tau.uht that America's mission in the
world was to s(mv(> all mankintl and finally to make
them free; when he perceived after every other means
had failed, that only |)hysi('al forc(* could affect Ger-
many and that "tlu* sore spot" in the world must be
heaKnl. as a cancer is, with the surgeon's knife; then
he ai)i)eared in person, on April 2, 1917, before the
Congress of the United States and read his great war
message. Following his advice, Congress declared on
April () that a state of war existed with Germany.
The message was in substance as follow^s :
GciitlciiuMi of the Congress:
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because
there arc serious, very serious, choices of policj' to be made, and
made immediately.
On the third of Feljruary last I laid before you the extraordinary
announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and
after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all
restraints of law or of hiunanity and use its submarines to sink
every vessel tluit sought to approach either the ports of Great
Britain and Ireland or the westei-n coasts of Europe or any of the
ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediter-
ranean.
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels
of eveiy kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo,
their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the
bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy
for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with
those of belligerents.
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 9
Even hospital ships and ships carrying rehef to the stricken
people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-
conduct by the German Government itself and were distinguished
by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same
reckless lack of compassion or of principle. . . .
I am not now thinking of the loss of property, immense and
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruc-
tion of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children,
engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest
periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and lawful.
Property can be paid for ; the lives of peaceful and innocent
people cannot be.
The present German submarine warfare against commerce is
a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations.
American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways
which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and
people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk in
the waters in the same way. The challenge is to all mankind.
Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.
The choice we make for ourselves must be made after very
careful thought. We must put excited feeling away. Our
motives will not be revenge or the victorious show of the physical
might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human
rights, of which we are only a single champion. . . .
The German Government denies the right of neutrals td use
arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed,
even in the defense of their rights. The armed guards which
we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond
the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be.
There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of mak-
ing ; we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the
most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored
U) Ll.ST WE FOHCLT
or violatoil. The \vron<;s against whicli we now array ourselves
are not common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of Imnuin
hfe.
With a profound sense of the solemn step I am taking and of
the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating
obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that
the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German
(lovernment to be in fact nothing less than war against the Gov-
ernment anil people of the United States; that it formally accept
the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it and
that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a
more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all its power
and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the
German Empire to terms and end the Mar.
While we do these things — these deeply momentous things
— let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what
our motives and our objects are. Our object is to vindicate the
principles of peace and justice in the life of the world against
selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free
and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose
and action as will henceforth insure the observance of those
principles.
Xeutrahty is no longer desirable where the peace of the world
is involved and the freedom of its peoples ; and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic govern-
ments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by
their will, not by the will of their people.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no
foehng toward them but one of sj-mpathy and friendship. It was
not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering
this war. It was not with their knowledge or approval.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 11
by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Govern-
ment could be trusted to keep faith within it, or to observe its
agreements. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of
opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away ; the plotting of
inner circles, who could plan what they would and render an
account to no one, would be a corruption seated at its very heart.
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady
to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any
narrow interests of their own.
Indeed, it is now evident that German spies were here even
before the war began. They have played their part in serving
to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real
friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security
at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us
at oiir very doors, the note to the German Minister at Mexico
City is eloquent evidence.
We are accepting this challenge because we know that in such
a Government, following such methods, we can never have a
friend ; and that in the presence of its organized power, always
lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there
can be no assured security of the democratic governments of the
world.
We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural
foe of liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of
the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power.
We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pre-
tense about them, to fight thus for the peace of the world and
for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included ;
for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men
everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The
world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be
planted upon the tested foundations of political Hberty.
12 LEST Wi: I'OHCEr
Wv \\:\xv no selfish t'nds to serve. \\ C desire no roiKiuest,
:ii) tltiiniiiioii. We seek no iiulemnilies for ourselves, no material
eoinpensation for the saerifices we shall freely make. We are l)ut
one of the i-hamjiions of the ri that was meant for all mankind was here
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 17
given plan and realitj-. The associations by which we are here
surrounded are the inspiriting associations of that noble death
which is only a glorious consummation. From this green hillside
we also ought to be able to see with comprehending eyes the world
that lies around us and conceive anew the purpose that must set
men free.
It is significant — significant of their own character and pur-
pose and of the influences they were setting afoot — that Wash-
ington and his associates, hke the barons at Runnymede, spoke
and acted, not for a class but for a people. It has been left for
us to see to it that it shall be understood that they spoke and
acted, not for a single people only, but for all mankind. They
were thinking not of themselves and of the material interests
which centered in the little groups of landholders and merchants
and men of affairs with whom they were accustomed to act, in
Virginia and the colonies to the north and south of here, but of a
people which wished to be done with classes and special interests
and the authority of men whom they had not themselves chosen
to rule over them.
They entertained no private purpose, desired no peculiar
privilege. They were consciously planning that men of every
class should be free and America a place to which men out of
every nation might resort who wished to share with them the
rights and privileges of freemen. And we take our cue from them
— do we not? We intend what they intended.
We here in America believe our participation in this present
war to be only the fruitage of what they planted. Our case
differs from theirs only in this, that it is our inestimable privilege
to concert with men out of every nation what shall make not
only the liberties of America secure, but the liberties of every
other people as well. We are happy in the thought that we are
permitted to do what they would have done had they been in
IS LEST WE FORGET
our place. There must now be settled once for all what was
settled for America in the great age upon whose inspiration we
draw to-day.
This is surely a fitting place from which cahnh' to look out
upon our task that we may fortify our spirits for its accomplish-
ment. And this is the appropriate place from which to avow,
alike to the friends who look on and to the friends with whom
we have the happiness to be associated in action, the faith and
purpose with which we act.
This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in which
we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon every scene and
eveiy act of the supreme tragedy. On the one hand stand the
peoples of the world — not only the peoples actually engaged,
but many others also who suffer under mastery but cannot
act ; peoples of many races and every part of the world — the
peoples of stricken Russia still, among the rest, though they are
for the moment unorganized and helpless. Opposed to them,
masters of many armies, stand an isolated, friendless group of
governments who speak no common purpose, but only selfish
ambitions of their own by which none can profit but themselves,
and whose peoples are fuel in their hands ; governments which
fear their people and yet are for the time their sovereign lords,
maldng everj^ choice for them and disposing of their lives and
fortunes as they will, as well as of the lives and fortunes of every
people who fall under their power — governments clothed with
the strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that
is altogether alien and hostile to our own. The past and the
present are in deadly grapple and the peoples of the world are
being done to death between them.
There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final.
There can be no compromise. No half-way decision would be
tolerable. No half-way decision is conceivable. These are the
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD 19
ends for which the associated peoples of the world are fighting
and which must be conceded them before there can be peace :
1. Every power anywhere that can secretly and of its own single
choice bring war upon the world must be bound or destroyed.
2. All questions must be settled in accordance with the wishes
of the people concerned.
3. The same respect for honor and for law that leads honorable
men to hold their promises as sacred and to keep them at any
cost must direct the nations in dealing with one another.
4. A league of nations must be formed strong enough to in-
sure the peace of the world.
These great objects can be put into a single sentence. What
we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed
and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.
These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and seeking
to reconcile and accommodate what statesmen may wish, with
their projects for balances of power and national opportunity.
They can be realized only by the determination of what the
thinking peoples of the world desire, with their longing hope for
justice and for social freedom and opportunity.
I cannot but fancy that the air of this place carries the accents
of such principles with a peculiar kindness. Here were started
forces which the great nation against which they were primarily
directed at first regarded as a revolt against its rightful authority,
but which it has long since seen to have been a step in the libera-
tion of its own peoples as well as of the people of the United
States ; and I stand here now to speak — speak proudly and
with confident hope — of the spread of this revolt, this libera-
tion, to the great stage of the world itself ! The blinded rulers
of Prussia have aroused forces they know little of — forces which,
once aroused, can never be crushed to earth again ; for they have
at their heart an inspiration and a purpose which are deathless
and of the very stuff of triumpli !
A KIXG OF HEROES
KIXO" is not a woixl that will go out of use
wlion the world has been won for democracy.
We shall still use it much as we do now, when we say,
"He is a prince" or "He is a king among men" ; for
there are still good kings, as well as bad ones. Some
countries that are really democratic prefer to keep
kings as reminders of their past and as ornaments
of their present.
England is really more democratic than the United
States and 3'et England has a king ; and as some one
has said, he is a king and a democrat and a king of
democrats. This was well shown by his letter to the
first American soldiers w^ho marched through London
in April, 1918, on their way to the battle hne in France.
Each soldier w^as handed an envelope bearing the in-
scription, "A message to you from his majesty. King
George V." In the envelope was the letter shown on
the opposite page, from a democratic king to the
American soldiers in the army of democracy.
Xo autocratic king or kaiser desires to shake the
hand of each of his soldiers or to become in any way
one of them. To an autocrat, to the German Kaiser,
20
DSOR CASTILE
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