Best Stories of the 1914 European War. Various

to suggest that we proceed to Nicolaisadt, a seaport fifty miles to the west.

      “We took this good advice and found comfortable lodgings in that place. We also had the good fortune to discover an American freight steamer, on which we were permitted to sail on August 5. The voyage was dangerous, as all the beacon lights had been removed from the passage outward, which is narrow and made hazardous by shoals.

      “Two other steamers left port at the same time. The first was commanded by a Russian pilot. It ran aground and was wrecked. The other vessel narrowly escaped the same fate. Our steamer, however, got safely clear and we arrived without accident at Hernosand, Sweden.”

      CHARLEROI A CITY OF DEAD

      Describing the entry of the French into the unhappy town of Charleroi, whence, after previous fighting, they drove the Germans across the Sambre, a Times correspondent writes:

      “Outside an inn was to be seen the dead figure of a German officer with his head bowed over a basin and soap lather dry upon his face, where he had been shot in the act of washing.

      “There was another who lay across a table, while a cup of coffee which he had been in the act of raising to his lips at the moment when death found him lay broken on the ground.

      “In every part of the city houses were smouldering or in flames. Every cellar was occupied by the terror-stricken inhabitants. This is the account given of the struggle for Charleroi by the French troops which took part in the operations.

      “After listening to these accounts the correspondent heard the town was surrounded by German troops. Anxious to ascertain the truth of this report, he started in the direction of Namur. A few miles out of Philippeville he met a Belgian officer and the paymaster-general of Namur, who told him that the town of Namur was occupied by Germans. It had been subjected to a furious bombardment, and the fire of the enemy had been so well regulated that the first few shots had silenced two of the forts.”

      HANSI REBUKES HIS CAPTOR

      Hansi, the Alsatian caricaturist who was arrested by the Germans some months ago because of his pro-French sentiments, escaped and fled to France to avoid imprisonment. He is now in a French regiment acting as an interpreter. The German officer who had caused his arrest was the first prisoner brought before him. The officer complained of the treatment he had received and Hansi replied:

      “It was certainly better than you gave me at Colmar.”

      “GAVE GERMANS WHAT FOR”

      Philip Gibbs, the London Daily Chronicle correspondent, describing his railway journey from Paris to Boulogne, says:

      “On the way we fell into many surprising and significant scenes. One of these was when we suddenly heard a shout of command in English and saw a body of men in khaki with Red Cross armlets suddenly run along the platform to an incoming train from the north with stretchers and drinking bottles. A party of English wounded had arrived from the scene of action between Mons and Charleroi.

      “We were kept back by French soldiers with fixed bayonets, but through the hedges of steel we had the painful experience of seeing a number of British soldiers with bandaged heads and limbs descending from the troop train. They looked spent with fatigue and pain after the journey, but some of them were sufficiently high spirited to laugh at their sufferings and give a hearty cheer to the comrades who came to relieve them with medical care.

      “I had a few words with one of them and questioned him about the action, but like all British soldiers he was very vague in his descriptions, and the most arresting sentence in his narrative was the reiterated assertion that ‘we got it in the neck.’

      “I understood from him, however, that the British troops had stood their ground well under terrific fire and that the Germans had been given ‘what for.’