.
The English ranks were suddenly reinforced; they turned and charged the
Germans, who fled in disorder.

All the Germans fled--but one. Says an English soldier, Trooper S.
Cargill:

When they saw us coming they turned and fled, at least all but
one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I
caught hold of his horse, which was half mad with terror, and
my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the
awful glaze in his eyes, and we saw that the poor devil was
dead.

That ghastly vision of the mounted corpse can find no place in histories
of this war. It has no historical significance even if it did receive a
place in the cable dispatches from the front. Only from the lips of
soldiers or from their pens when they snatch a few moments from the
business of war to write to their people at home come such naively
graphic accounts of trivial but illuminative incidents.

In many an American family is treasured a packet of yellow papers, on
which are written, in ink fast fading away, brief and intimate
impressions of the civil war by men who waged it. Every war has thus its
unknown, unhonored chroniclers, who send to their little home circles
narratives that for startling realism no highly paid special
correspondent could surpass.

Trooper Cargill's letter is one of a number contained in an
extraordinary volume just published by the George H. Doran Company of
New York, with the title "In the Firing Line," (50 cents net.) Mr. A.
St. John Adcock collected a large number of letters sent home during the
last few weeks by English soldiers fighting in France and has arranged
them to form what is perhaps the most essentially human account of the
great war that has yet appeared.

Consider, for instance, the narrative of Private Whitaker of the
Coldstream Guards. He fought through the terrific four-day battle near
Mons, and his account of it follows. It must be remembered that the
British troops who took part in that battle had sailed from Southampton
only four days before:

You thought it was a big crowd that streamed out of the
Crystal Palace when we went to see the Cup Final. Well,
outside Compiegne it was just as if that crowd came at us. You
couldn't miss them. Our bullets plowed into them, but still
they came for us. I was well intrenched, and my rifle got so
hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I should have
enough bull