And if resuscitated Poland, taught by misfortune, compassionate toward
the persecuted and proscribed because she herself has been persecuted
and proscribed, should try to cure herself of her anti-Semitism, which
has saddened her best friends in France, would not you say that she
indeed deserved to be resuscitated from among the dead?




"With the Honors of War"

By Wythe Williams

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]


It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at
Gerbéviller, the little "Martyr City" that hides its desolation as it
hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.

There was a dense fog. At 6 A.M. fog usually covers the valleys of the
Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across
the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the
laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the "First French Army,"
which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The
gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him.
He said it would be necessary to have the permit "viséd for departure"
at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines
of another building just distinguishable through the fog.