Part 10

Six years before this remarkable incident, which is vouched for by more than one authority, another man of mysterious origin--who, if he was not actually a prince of the realm, was in all probability of royal blood on one side--was discovered in a Tongking battalion. A sergeant and the owner of an illustrious name, since his father was a general and Minister to a European monarch, it was noticed that he never received any letters from his father, but that every month the paymaster handed him a thousand francs which he never failed to share with his less well-to-do comrades. Why was he there, and what was the mystery surrounding his birth? was often the mental reflection of those who enjoyed his friendship and generosity. Only after his death did they get an inkling of the truth. His military book stated that his name was V. de S----, son of V. de S----, General of Division and Minister of War. "There was no mention of his mother's name," said a superior officer to M. de Pouvourville, who tells the story, "and there can be little doubt that she was of too illustrious a rank to acknowledge a son the circumstances of whose birth had placed him beyond the pale."

Some excellent stories of life in the Legion were told to the authors of this article by the above named M. Maurer.

One of his orderlies was Graf X----, the son of the then Governor of Brandenburg, but he could never learn in what circumstances this man had fallen from his high estate. It was different in the case of his

## particular chum, a young Englishman of distinguished manners, who spoke

several languages and was an accomplished musician, though the secret of his life did not come out until several years after M. Maurer had retired and returned to Paris. One day, when passing the Madeleine, he saw a splendid equipage, drawn by a pair of magnificent greys, with silver harness, standing outside the church, and, lo and behold! sitting in the carriage was his old chum. Hailing him by the name by which he had always known him, M. Maurer was astonished to see his friend put his finger to his lips. The next moment he was invited to enter the carriage, and, with an invitation to dinner, off they drove to a fashionable restaurant in the Champs Elysees. Over dinner M. Maurer's former comrade told him his real name and story. A young man of good family, he had started his career with an excellent position in the Bank of England. One day, when ten thousand pounds had been slid into his hands, a sudden temptation came over him, a foolish desire to have a flutter at "Monte." So he took the earliest opportunity of leaving London. As was only to be expected, the inevitable happened; he lost at the tables every penny of the sum he had embezzled. Aware of the disgrace that awaited him when the theft was discovered, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion.

"Now, it is a well-known fact," concluded M. Maurer, "that the sins of a man who has served his full time in the Legion are wiped off the slate, and I suppose that something like this must have happened in the case of my young friend. I have no doubt that his family restored the money. Anyway, he attained his rehabilitation. He is the bearer of a very well-known name, and to-day occupies an important--a _very_ important--post in public affairs in England."

IV--THE ROMANCE OF THE EURASIAN

Another little romance revolving round the life of a legionary, whose birth was enveloped in mystery, was told some years ago by a British soldier who served in the Legion. After an engagement at Cao-Thuong, there was found on one of the dead, sewn in a belt, six British war medals and a letter addressed to the narrator. Judge of his surprise when he found that it was in perfect English, of which he had never for a moment suspected his comrade-in-arms had a knowledge, and that it contained the statement that the medals had been won by the writer's father and grandfather in India. His mother, the writer explained, was a native, and therefore he, as a Eurasian, although born in wedlock, was ineligible for the British Army. As his tastes were wholly military, and the greatest desire of his life was to add to his forebears' collection of medals, he had enlisted in the Legion.

The mental attitude of the man who regards the Foreign Legion as a _pis aller_ is a common trait among its members; it is often, indeed, the last resource of those who have met with life's disappointments.

There was once an officer of the German army who had invented a new type of cannon, and could not get its merits recognised, either by his own country or by France, as rapidly as he would have liked, or receive prompt remuneration for his work. Straightway, therefore, he went and joined the Légion Etrangère. Some little time later, in 1895, the French authorities, waking up to the possibility of the value of the work of so eminent an engineer, approached him on the subject, but by then he had become thoroughly soured. He declined to have anything to do with them, and with the air of one whose genius has been recognised too late hastily returned to his kitchen, where he had long carried out the duties of regimental cook.

In the barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbes, where the most cordial and frequently rowdy _bonne camaraderie_ reigns, failures in art, science, literature, and every other walk in life may be found by hundreds. Special cases like that of the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel Elkington, who, after being cashiered by general court-martial, joined the Legion as a simple private at the beginning of the present war and won his way to distinction, are rare. He was in the thick of the fighting in the Champagne country, lay for ten months in hospital badly wounded, and before regaining the confidence of his King and country was personally decorated with the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre by an officer attached to General Joffre's staff. To find an exact parallel to this instance of reinstatement in the British Army would be difficult. Among the legionaires, however, there have been quite a number of men of the type of the American Daly, an artist and pupil of Gérôme, who lost at Monte Carlo everything his father had given him to pay for his art training in Europe; scores, too, of such enigmas as that fine young fellow who joined the Legion in 1893, served in Tongking, and left in 1898, at the end of his time, when by chance his superiors discovered that he had been first tenor at the Theâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels. Not a note had he sung, not a single reference to music had he made whilst in the regiment! Ah, what stories some of these ne'er-do-wells, drunkards, comedians, and gentlemen with fine manners could tell if only they would consent to open their lips!

V--WHY GERMANS HATE THE FOREIGN LEGION

Many of them, of course, have no tale worth telling, and among these are the deserters from other armies. If we include the Alsatians and Lorrainers who join to avoid service under the hated German flag, they form a very big class indeed. Nearly every year more than a thousand men of the annexed provinces and more than a thousand Germans flocked to the French standard, with the result that the Legion has always been disliked and slandered by Germans. We have before us seven closely-printed pages forming a list of books and pamphlets written by German writers, who, filled with Pan-Germanist hatred and inspired by the virulent libels of anonymous scribes, have endeavoured for the past twenty years to throw mud at a military organization into which so many of their countrymen escaped. This prompts new thought. If German soldiers are so glad to join a body in which life is "a veritable hell upon earth," where men "never taste meat, but only bread and rice," where they "sleep on the bare ground," where "noses, ears, and fingers are cut off for the slightest fault," where they are "buried in the sand to the waist with an iron cage over them filled with hungry rats"--the last idea was stolen by the German slanderers from Octave Mirbeau's "Jardin des Supplices"--what must their life in their own army be like?

As a matter of fact, many Germans who have served in the Legion have had, on their return home, nothing but good to say about it, and have become voluntary recruiting agents for France, hence an increased bitterness on the part of the Huns. A few years ago deserters from the German army became so numerous that a society was formed at Munich, bearing the name "The German Protection Society Against the Foreign Legion." Several times men were arrested for trying to persuade their comrades to join the Legion, but they had to be released, as it was found that they were pure-born Teutons.

And now let us apply the supreme test and look into the fighting record of the legionaries. As military experts are agreed that they are among the finest fighters in the world. Innumerable instances of their stubbornness can be given, and it is the quality which has made them, time after time, invaluable as a "stiffening" whenever it has been considered necessary to draft a number of soldiers of the Legion into a regiment of less experienced troops. "The most pusillanimous of them," said an old French officer, who had seen much service in Africa, to us, "will hold out to the death when side by side with a legionary and inspired by his superb courage."

One of the feats of the Foreign Legion was the taking of Son-Tay on December 16th, 1883, a square brick _citadelle_ protected by a hundred cannon, a moat five yards wide, and hedges of bamboo, and defended by twenty-five thousand men--ten thousand Chinese regulars, ten thousand Black Flags, and five thousand Annamites. As an example of pure bravery, look at the thirty-six days' siege of Tuyen-Quan, which in 1885 was held by six hundred legionaries against twenty thousand Chinese. Few celebrated sieges have attained and none surpassed in horror what took place there. On the occasion of the Camerone affair, in Mexico, sixty-five legionaries, without food or shelter, in an open court and under a tropical sun, held in check for more than ten hours two thousand enemies, three hundred of whom they killed. The word "Camerone" is embroidered on the flag of the Foreign Legion, and if you go to the Invalides you will see on one of the walls, in letters of gold, the names of the three officers who directed that handful of heroes, with the date of the fight: "Lieutenant Vilain, Sub-Lieutenant Mandet, and Captain Danjou; April 30th, 1863."

VI--FRANCE'S TRIBUTE TO THE LEGION

The bravery of the Foreign Legion has been so conspicuous that on February 16th, 1906, M. Eugène Etienne, then Minister of War, proposed that the flag of the 1st Foreign Regiment be decorated with the Legion of Honour, "in recognition of the acts of devotion, courage, and abnegation which a troop, ever on a war footing, renders to the country in the defence of its Colonial possessions." This was done, and at the Invalides, in a special case, can be seen an old flag of the regiment bearing the date September 24th, 1862, a flag which had been retaken from the enemy, and on the staff of which hangs the Cross of the Legion of Honour, the finest tribute which France can pay to the glorious deeds of the Foreign Legion.

During the present war a further distinction has been granted the marching regiment of the Legion. Authority has just been given the men to wear the _fourragère_, or braid, over the left shoulder. The flag of this regiment had already been decorated with the Croix de Guerre.

The latest recorded exploit of this gallant corps was the capture, at the point of the bayonet, of a fortified village strongly held by the enemy. The men of the Legion held out so vigorously that all the enemy's counter-attacks were beaten off, and seven hundred and fifty German prisoners were sent to the rear.

The British residents in Paris and other parts of France who volunteered for service in the French army and trained at the Magic City in 1914 were drafted into the Foreign Legion, and the survivors have reason to be proud of their old corps.

But the complete history of the doings of the Legion during this war can only be written some time hence. Suffice it to say, in addition to the above facts, that they have been mentioned in army orders no fewer than three times--a distinction not won by any other French regiment. At one time, during the Champagne campaign, they advanced eighteen kilomètres into the enemy's front, and if only there had been reinforcements to back them up there is no doubt a great victory would have been won. The many personal heroic deeds, too, necessitate names and details which will not yet pass the Censor's scrutiny. But one incident, in conclusion, perhaps we may mention, as recorded to us by M. Maurer.

"One of my former men, an Alsatian peasant of the lowest type, speaking only of his own _patois_ and unable to read or write, came to Paris after serving fifteen years in the Foreign Legion. I was instrumental in getting him a place in a public wash-house, where he drew a handcart for the sum of four francs a day, which, by the by, he promptly spent in drink as soon as it was handed to him. As soon as war was declared he was off again to his _métier_. He returned on leave after ten months in the trenches, and came to see me. Judge of my surprise when I found he had become a sub-lieutenant, wearing the Croix de Guerre and Croix Militaire with the three palms! Still unable to speak more than a dozen words in French he explained in his dialect, when I inquired what he had done to acquire such distinctions, that he had killed fifty-two Boches in the most dramatic circumstances. Night after night he had slipped out of his trench, and like a snake in the grass crawled across 'No Man's Land' to the enemy's listening-posts, which are invariably under the charge of experienced officers and picked men. He did his work silently and expeditiously--with a knife. A terrible but true anecdote of this relentless war!"

ADVENTURES OF WOMEN WHO FACE DEATH ON BATTLEGROUNDS

_Little Stories of Woman's Indomitable Courage_

This is a group of little tales of brave women--direct from the battlefields. They are but typical of the noble deeds of the mothers and daughters of all nations throughout the war. It has been estimated that forty thousand women have fought in the armies--thousands of them in soldiers' uniforms. The first three stories told here are from the _New York American_, and the fourth is from the _New York World_.

I--STORY OF ENGLISHWOMAN WHO RISKED LIFE ON RUSSIAN BATTLEFRONT

Mrs. Hilda Wynne has youth, beauty, wealth and fascination--she cast them all into the great pool of the war in Europe, and added bravery to them--a limitless bravery. She wears the Croix de Guerre, the gift of France. King Albert of Belgium decorated her with the Order of Leopold, and Russia honored her with the Order of St. George. These rare distinctions she won by unique service. She drove her ambulance between the first trenches. Back and forth she went, driving her automobile at furious pace with the fire pouring upon her from the allies on one side and the Germans on the other, but a mile separating them. Her unit worked between the first trenches, the only workers permitted to operate on this danger line. Mrs. Wynne and her organization, the Bevan-Wynne Unit, have saved more than 25,000 lives of wounded that but for her speedy aid would have been lost. She then came to America for the specific purpose of interesting Americans in the needs of Russian soldiers.

_Told by Hilda Wynne, herself_

I have looked into the eyes of death and seen there many things.

Looking upon the human carnage I have witnessed, from this distance and in the little breathing space I have taken from service to make you Americans know the Russians and their needs better, I testify that I have seen thousands of heroic acts, but the bravest act happened on the Russian front.

I saw two aviators go up to certain death. They were a Russian and a Frenchman. Both were little men. They went up to meet twenty German aeroplanes. It was suicidal. But they had been ordered to go--and theirs was the spirit of the gallant six hundred. I stood near them as they made ready to go. They said nothing. That is one of the lessons you learn in war--not to waste time nor words.

They got their machines ready as a rider tests his saddle straps and stirrups before starting for his morning gallop through the park. A little pothering and fixing of the machinery and they had gone. They went straight up and began blazing away at the German planes. I watched and the cords of my heart tightened, for the German planes, looking like great gray birds with wings wide spread, came closer and closer. They surrounded them. They formed a solid double circle about them. Then they began to fire. And I turned and covered my eyes with my hands, for out of that solid, ominous group two dots detached themselves and fell. A few seconds later what had been aeroplanes were splintered wood and what had been men a broken mass covered by smoking rags.

While this was the bravest act I saw in two and a half years on the firing line, I readily recall the most pathetic. It was the second line of men in the Russian trenches. They were unarmed soldiers. There were no guns for them. They took their places there expecting that the man in front might drop, and the second line man could pick up his gun and take his place. The reports that some of the Russian soldiers have desperately fought with switches I have no doubt is true.

I have seen many of the allies die. They all die bravely. At Dixmude when the fusiliers arrived 8,000 and went out 4,000 there was magnificent courage in death. The Frenchman dies calling upon his God. The Englishman says nothing or feebly jests; just turns his face to the wall and is still. The Russian is mystic and secretive. The Russian lives behind a veil of reserve. You never fully know him. In the last moments you know by his rapt look that his soul is in communion with his God.

One of the deepest, unalterable truths of the war is the German power of hatred. It is past measuring. An example occurred at Dixmude. When we had been there three days we were driven out. I took my car filled with the wounded across a bridge just in time. A second after we had crossed there was a roar, then a crash. A shot had torn the bridge to pieces. Three weeks later to our hospital was brought a wounded German.

"I know you," he said. "We nearly got you at the bridge at Dixmude."

"I remember," I said.

That man's eyes used to follow me in a strange way. Build no beautiful theories of his national animosity disappearing, or being swallowed up in his gratitude. There was no such thought in his mind. The eyes said: "I wish I had killed you. But since I didn't I wish I might have another chance."

This after I had driven away a group of zouaves who had taken everything from him, including his iron cross, and who were debating whether to toss him into the canal then or that night.

It is quite true that the Germans fire upon hospitals. Don't believe any disclaimers of such acts. There have been many of them. The aeroplanes were circling about and above a rough hospital we had constructed and we had to leave it in a hurry. We told the patients of their danger and hurried them into ambulances to take them to a safer spot. One of the patients was a German. Both his arms had been shot away. He was in great pain. I went to his cot and offered to help him.

"Lean on me," I said. But he turned upon me a baleful look.

"No," he said, staggering to his feet. His tormented body reeled as he made his way to the door. "No," he repeated. "I will take no help from the enemy."

It is true that a shell has burst at my feet. It has happened dozens of times. That isn't alarming. If it burst a few feet away I should be killed. Shells glance down and under the ground. That saves one if he is near it. A shell bursting near one is a commonplace in war.

The shells have a disturbing way about them, more disturbing to your plans than your equanimity. Shells prevented my having a nice comfortable illness. In southern Russia one can get little to eat. Coarse black bread is the chief food. It causes unpleasant disorders. I, afflicted with one of them, arranged a table in the corner of my tent. I placed remedies on the table, undressed and turned in, intending to have a cozy illness of a few days. But as I lay there came an angry buzzing. A shell hissed through, carrying away a corner of my tent. That ended my illness. I had no more time to think of it.

The greatest peril I encountered was not from shells. I have said that one becomes used to them. One of the greatest dangers I faced was on a dark night drive along a precipice in the Caucasus. It was while the plan to bring troops through Persia to Russia was expected to be successful. I went ahead with some ambulances. It was necessary to take two Russian officers across the mountain. I offered my services. The road was an oddly twisting one. On one side was a high wall, on the other a precipice whose depth no one calculated. But as I allowed myself to look into it at twilight I could see no bottom to it. We started on the all night drive at dusk. The precipice remained with us, a foot away, most of the distance. Had my car skidded twelve inches the story would have been different.

Then, too, I wandered once within the Turkish lines, mistaking them for our own. But amidst a courteous silence I was allowed to discover my mistake and escape without harm.