Claremore Progress. And Rogers County Democrat (Claremore, Okla.), Vol. 22, No. 40, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 12, 1914 Page: 2 of 8
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' • V — r —( ' Ti | ■ .
CLAKHMORK, OIL A, PIOOIMI
TRe Human
Slaughter-
House
u
By WILHELM LAMSZUS
tV p> right | VrmlcrUH A. N'.oliim C,iuip Oj)
CHAPTER I.
dan our new kit. This very d«y «•
have kui iii become *uldieri>
Things «re moving t pac« with u>
now.
Mobllltatlon.
War! War U dcclarod! tin iho news
speed* hollow ••yi'd through the
■Iroot* We aru at war It1* the real
Hi I ii K thin time.
Mobilization!
Tlii< ominous word dominates the
plncurdj on the hoardings The news-
papers reproduce Iho proclamations In
their heaviest typo, and rumors and
dispatches flutter like a ruffled dove-
cote round thin day of blood and Iron.
It la deudly uuruost now. And tbla
sense of the seriousness of It baa
nuuiliod the state like a stroke of
paralyHlN. Hut then a Jar. an of a
lever thrown over, goes throuKb the
vaat Iron fabric. And every one ha*
Rot to yield to OiIh Jar. The time for
anxiety and lie*Uation lu over, for
doubt* uud OHCillatlon. The moment
has now come when wo reuse to ho
citizens, from henceforward we are
only soldiers—soldiers who have 110
time to think, who only Ituvu time to
die.
So they come flocking In from the
workshops, from tlio factories, from
behind the counters, from business of-
fices, and the open country—they
come flocking Into the town, and every
man (alls in to stand by his native
land.
"Four days from date" was the or-
der on my summons. Well, the fourth
morning has come, and I have said
good-by to my wife and my two chil-
dren. Thank Clod, the fourth morn-
ing has come, for the parting wu* not
easy, and my heart aches when I think
of them "at home."
"Where are you going, Daddy?"
asked tfaby, as I kissed her for the
last time with my portmanteau in my
hand.
"Daddy's going on a Journey," said
her mother, and looked at mo with a
amiie amid her tears. ■ Yes, he's go-
ing on a journey, girlie, and you, little
chap, you've got to be good, and do as
Mummy tells you."
And then we got the parting over
quickly, for Dora kept up her pluck
until the last moment. .
Now we are drawn up in the bar-
rack-yard with bag and baggage—we
of the rank and file—we reservists
and militiamen, every man at hi; place
by the table.
How serious their faces are. They
reveal no trace of youthful high spirits
or martial exuberance. Their expres-
sions rather betoken deep thought.
"The war that in the end was bound
to come"—go we heard and so we
read in the papers. "That is bound to
be so, that is a law of nature. The
nations are snatching the bread from
one another's mouths; they are de-
priving each other of the air to
breathe. That is a thing which in the
end can only be settled by force. And
if It has to be, better it should be to-
day than tomorrow."
We are mercenaries no longer—
those hirelings for murder, who ouc<!
sold their blood for money down to
ail and sundry. We are gladiators no
longer—slaves who enact the drama
of dying as an exciting spectacle for
the entertainment of the rich, and for
the lust of their eyes. It is to our
native land we took our oath. And if
it must be, we are resolved to die as
citizens, to die in the full conscious-
ness and full responsibility for our
acts.
What will the next few days have
In store for us?
Not one of us has probably ever,
■with bis own eyes, seen a field of
battle. But we have heard about it
from others, and we have read in
books of other men what a battle-
field looked like in 1870-71, and, as
though with our own eyes, we have
■watched the shells shattering human
bodies. Anil another thing we know is
that forty years ago in spite of inferior
guns and rifles, over a hundred and
twenty thousand dead stayed behind
on the field of honor. What percent-
age of the living will modern warfare
claim? Armies are being marshaled
vaster than the world has ever seen.
Germany alone can put six million
soldiers In the field; France as many.
Then the war of '70-'71 was nothing
more than a long-drawn affair of out-
posts! My brain reels when I try to
visualize these masses starting to
march against one another; I seem to
choke for breath.
Then are we a breed of men other
than our fathers?
Is the reason because we only have
one life to lose? And do we cling so
passionately to this life? Isn't our na-
tive land worth more than this scrap
of life?
There probably won't be many
among us who believe in the resurrec-
tion, who believe that our mangled
fcodies will rise again in new splendor.
Nor do we believe that our Father in
Heaven will have pleasure In our mur-
derous doings, that in that better
world he will regard us other than aa
cmr brothers' murderers. But we bend
•or beards before iron necessity. The
fatherland has called as. and we. aa
loyal sons, obey the command there is
■o evading, submissively. . . . From
today onward we belong to our native
land, so the major shouted a minute
ago as be read out the articles of war.
Aad it's going to be the real thing
this time.
The sergeant-major has already read
tbe roll axi checked it. We an al-
ready lold of in fours Now. la a long
—i tha
CHAPTtA II.
•oldlsr.
On iho afternoon of the following
day. the company Is detailed for bar-
rack drill We are lying on our stom-
ach* lu iho barrack-yard, and are be-
ing drilled in taking aim and tiring
lying dowu.
I have Just been «lghtlng.
Iii front of iiie on iho barrack wall
over there they have painted targets.
Ring targets, head target*, chest tar-
gets Three hundred yards. I lake
polntblank aim, and pre** the trigger
"Square In the c hest " That ought to
Count a* a hull'* eye.
Wonder how many clips of car
trldge* am I going to got through?
Wonder if there will bo a bull'seye
among them?
If every man of those millions they
are putting Into the field against the
eneiny fires about a hundred car-
tridges, and there Is one bull'S'oye In
every hundred, that work* out at
thai amounts lo . . and
I can't help smiling at this neat sum
In arithmetic . . . then the answer
is no one ut all. That is a merry *ura.
Snick!
The fifth cnrtrldse tumbles out.
I rnm In another clip of dummy car
trldges.
How quickly and smoothly that'i
done. One—two seconds, and Ave
cartridges are set In your ninRazlne.
Every one of thein, If need bo, can
penetrate six men; It can penetrate
paliHados and trees; It can penetrate
earthworks nnd stono walls. There
Is practically no cover left against
this dainty little missile, against thli
little pointed cone.
And what a wonderful bit of mpeh;
anism this Mauser rlflo Is. How
wretchedly badly off they were In
1870-71 with their rattletrap needle
guns. A single feeble bullet at a time,
and after you had fired It came the
long, complicated business of reload-
ing.
And yet the war accounted for well
over a hundred thousand French and
German dead.
I wonder how many dead this war
will account for? If only every fifth
man It) left on the field, and if another
fifth comes home Invalided . .
what will its harvest amount to then?
The whole of both countrysides are'
at this moment covered with soldiers
lying flat, and all of them with their
rifles at the ready, and all of them
Wonder whether ihey have engine*
of such perfect provision uu the other
•Ida?
How the exports have, day In, day
oul, boon Invoutlna and constructing
now marvels of mechanism Tho
mechanical side of war haa been
raised to a high staudard of genius
and a Una art. Two hundred and forty
bullets and more to the minute!
What a marvel of mechanism one nf
those machineguns is. You set It
bulling, and It spurts oul bulleta
thicker than rain can fall. And tha
automaton licks Its Hps hungrily nnd
sweeps from right to left, It Is
INilntod oil the middle of the body,
and sprays tho whole firing-line with
one swoop It is as though death had
scrapped his scythe for old Iron; as If
nowadays lie had graduated as expert
mechanic. They have ceased to mow
corn by hand nowaday*. Ity this time
of day even the sheaves are Katherod
MP by machinery. And so they will
have to shovel our millions of bodies
underground with burying machines
t'urse! I cannot got rid of this
hideous thought. It la always crop-
ping up again. We have passed on
from retail to wholesale methods of
business. In place of tbe loom at
which you sat working with your own
hands, they have now set the groat
power-looms In motion. Once It was a
knightly death, an honorable soldier's
death; now It Is dentil by machinery.
That is what Is sticking In my gul-
let. Wo nro being hustled from life
to death by experts—by mechanicians.
And Just as they turn out button* and
pins by wIioIohuIo methods of produc-
tion, so they are now turning out the
crippled and the dead by machinery.
Why do I, all of a sudden, begin to
shudder? I fool as If It had suddenly
become clear as daylight that this Is
mudnoss—blood-red madness lowering
for us there.
Curse! I must not go on brooding
over it any longer, or It will drive me
mad. Your rlflo at the ready! The
enemy is facing you! Has that ceased
to be a case of man to man? What
does It matter even if the bullet finds
Its billet more surely? Aim steadily
--straight for the chest. . . . Who
is it really facing me? The man I am
now going to shoot dead! An
enemy? What la an enemy?
And again I see .myself on that
glorious morning of my holidays, at a
French railway station, and again I
am gazing curiously out of the win
dow. A foreign country and a
stranger-people. The moment for de-
parture has come. The station-master
is Just giving the signal. Then a little
old woman extends her trembling
BURNING UP LOS ANGELES OPIUM DEN OUTFIT
i,m&. ~m l
' . - «i . ujjg
Time for
Action
It NOW. Don't
netted or postpone
helping your stom-
ach, liver and
bow«l« when there
is any indication of
weakness. To do
so only invites sick-
ness, Take
HOSTETTER'S
STOMACH SITTERS
today and let it help
you oadc to dally
health and strength
in l.os Angeles recently $35 000 worth of the stuff th it .1,earns are made of was he«,,od up In the old i.laia
iieruJSd °„h°r ? "r,1fle" tw,8r* adde<1 an(l lhe ,orch * « applied. Included lu the layouts was the gold-
encrustod pipe of tho centenarian, Llm Too, who offered 11,000 for Its return.
LEFT THEIR DESTINATIONS ON THE WALLS
m
A Pious Hypocrite.
Senator Cummins whs talking about
a notorious Interlocking director, re-
lates the Kansas City Star.
"This Interlocking director," ha
said, "declurea that if we curb his ac-
tivities the poor will suffer terribly.
I ask myself, though, Is he really
speaking on behalf of the poor or on
his owu behalf.
"lie reminds me of a man who
stopped In terrlOc Indignation at sight
of a group.of boys stoning a bird that
was tied to a tree by the leg.
" 'You scoundrels! You pltllesa
scoundrels!" cried the man.
"And he took the bird up In hit
hand and placed It In bis bosom ten-
derly.
"The next day at the office he was
henrd to remark with a chuckle;
" 'By gosh, you know, broiled robin
on toast Isn't half bad!"'
A GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
the ,u^ltant* °l fntwerp' when they «ed before the Germans, chalked on the walla of houses In the
r?rr sia- SEjjxrsone',or «re,*,,v"
AUSTRIAN INFANTRY FIGHTING IN BELGIUM
Now It Is Death by Machinery.
tsrmii yiri for this rery day «• at* get* oQ
srtml Is do* ear dvlllaa draaa, aad tad cm
pointing the death-bearing barrels at
one another, are perfecting them-
selves in the art of hitting the heart.
But behind them the guns are
swinging up. The gunners are Jump-
ing down and dragging the trail round.
They are already aligned, and a thou-
sand black mouths are gaping un-
cannily toward the heavens.
We were once standing—we were in
camp for musketry training at the
time—and watching a battery firing
with live ammunition. They had un-
limbered and were ready to fire. The
officers were peering into the dis-
tance through their field-glasses. The
targets were not as yet in sight. We
were all gazing Intently toward the
firing zone, where at any moment
something might come into view.
. . . There! Away over there. In
the distance. Something is moving!
A shout of command.
The subaltern points to the moving
targn with his right hand. He shouts
out the range. The gunners take aim,
and:
"Ready! No. 1 gun. Fire!"
The missile is already a wing, and
for the space of a moment we feel the
iron messenger flitting past. The air
is a-hum. Boom—and a thousand
yards in front of us the shell has ex-
ploded above the cavalry riding to
the attack, and has spattered Its rain
of lead over the blue targets. And
then Nos. 2. 3, 4, 5 and 6.
The nefct target was about a mile
away, and the new range quickly
found. Again the strange missile
sped away and covered its measured
course. It was a thing to marvel at
to see how it checked in the air of
its own volition and burst It seemed
as though each one of these iron cyl-
inders had a brain—as If it were en-
dowed .with life and conscioanei
certainly did it find its billet
And when the battery had ceased
firing and had limbered ut, and the
danger cone had been pulled down, wa
went out into the field of fire. There
tbe linked targets nnder fire were
lying. They had been struck down by
the shrapnel—all. the whole line.
Head. body. limbs; we did not find a
single figure that had not been drilled
through and through. We stood aad
samM at the accuracy of it, aad
~ a silent ahadder thought of tar-
| hand to the window, and a fine young
! fellow in our carriage takes the
wrinkled hand and strokes it, until the
old woman's tears course down her
motherly cheeks. Not a word does
she speak. She only looks at her boy,
and the lad gazes down on his mother.
Then it flashes upon me like a revela-
tion. Foreigners can shed tears.
Why, that is just the same thing it
is with us. They weep when they
take leave of one another. They love
one another and feel grief. . . .
And as the train rolled out of the sta-
tion, I kept on looking out of the win-
dow and seeing the old woman stand-
ing on the platform so desolately, and
gazing after the train without stirring.
I could not help thinking of my own
mother. It was I myself who was
saying good-by there, and on the plat-
form yonder my poor old mother was
in tears. Pocket-handkerchiefs were
floating in the breeze. They were
waving their hands, and I waved mine
too; for I, too, was one who belonged
to her. ...
And again I put my rifle to my
shoulder, and take aim for the center
of the target.
I will not go on torturing myself
with these thoughts.
The target seems to have been
moved naarer to me.
Of a sudden it seems to me as if
the blue-painted figure had stepped out
of Its white square. I gape at It. 1
distinctly see a face in front of me.
I have got my finger on the trigger
and feel the tension of the pressure'
Why don't I pull it through * My
finger is trembling. . . . Now. now
I recognize the fkce. That is the
young fellow at Nancy who was say-
ing good-by to his mother. . .
Then the spring gives, and the great
horror masters me. for I have fired
straight into a living face. Murderer'
Murderer! You have ahot tbe only
son of his mother dead. Thou art thy
brother's murderer. . . .
I take a bold on myaelf. I p„u
myself together. A murderer?
Folly! A spook!
Yon are a soldier.
Soldiers cease to be human beings.
Tbe fatherland Is at stake.
And without turning a hair I - r
aim at the enemy. If yoa mis* him
be will get yoa.
"Got him! la tbe Kiddle of tbe
' j
.J?
Not all the Austrian army is engaged in the attempt to repel the Russian invasion, as is shown by thla photo-
graph of Austrian infantry behind a barricade in Belgium ready to meet an advancing body of the enemy.
TRIED TO SAVE ANTWERP
Mr. P. C. Case of Welcome Lake,
Pa., writes: ^*1 suffered with Back-
ache and Kidney Trouble. My bead
ached, my aleep was broken and un-
refreshing. I felt
heavy and aleepy
after meala, waa
always nervoua
and tired, bad
bitter taste In my
mouth, was dizzy,
bad floating
specks before my
Mr V r Cam* eyei' WaB alwa>
Mr. F. C. Case. thJrgty haJ
dragging sensation across my loins,
difficulty in collecting my thoughts
and was troubled with shorts
ness of breath. Oodda Kidney Pills
have cured me of these complaints.
Dodds Kldpey Pills have done their
work and done it well. You are at
liberty to publish this letter for the
benefit of any sufferer who doubts tho
merit of Dodds Kidney Pll|s."
Dodds Kidney Pills, 60c. per box at
your dealer or Dedds Medicine Co.,
Buffalo, N. Y. Write for Household
Hints, Dainty Recipes; also music of
National Anthem. All 3 sent free.
Adv.
Prefer Indian Labor.
During the salmon fishing and can-
fling season in British Columbia a
large number of Indiana are employed
In the different branches of the can-
neries each year. The Indians are ex-
pert fishermen and are especially de-
sirable as employees in the business.
The Indian women and old men of tbe
tribe work in the canneries while the
able-bodied men do the fishing. Tha
duties of the Indian women consist
mainly of washing the flsh In prep-
aration for cooking and canning They
are, it is said, the most efficient for
this branch of the cannery work of
any procurable labor.
KAISER WILHELM AT THE FRONT
One of the many valiant men of tbe
British marine corps who was wound-
ed before Antwerp. In tha defense of
which they distinguished themselves,
accompanied by one of bis comrade*.
The Bed Hour.
It does not matter what time you
go to bed so long as you have a regu-
lar h.our and stick to it. The old
saying that an hour of sleep before
midnight Is worth two after Is not
true, but It has this much truth in
It: That the early hours of sleep
are worth more than the later. The
man who remains healthy goes to
bed about the same hour every night,
and it makes little difference whether
the hour be nine p. in. or three a. m.
He is truly a wise man who refrains
from discussing religion, politics or
self with his friends.
The kicker is bad enough, but he haa
several advantages over tbe man who
whines.
All things are possible except, per-
haps, losing an opportunity you never
^ad.
Wasted opportunities are generally
those that go to other people.
In enumerating bla virtues maajr •
man counts bis money first
To Cleanse
Rusty NaU
Wounds
Kaiser Wllbelm. at the right, aad a group of his oOcers, photographed oa
a pontoon bridge over th Riyer Meae* P-owgrapaea oa
PATHETIC STOMES FROM WAR-TORN EUROPE
"I hava jaat beard a alary poignant
in its misery - cablea a turi sagnadent
"A mother wcaft to sea ber Ma at a
hospital. Ha was lytag Mwafurtably
tucked ialMd.hU bead siawH ia a
toQdlfB.
- Tbe gay is Baa.' she SUM; let aa
go for a little tmra la tbe gardea;
your bead wfll ha better tor N.' aad
"Bat yoa mat be
seriously than yoa said." she said, anx-
'Taaly.
" "Bend aear, mother, aad I win tall
"Ky two legs aad mr left am bare
Outside tbe towa wa foea/oa a hill
tbe gnee of a Mghtaarter. I da as*
reaeaber ever to hare read a man
touching epitaph thaa that which tha
«ead aiaa-s ooasiadee had wito
pencil oa tbe iwgh woodda
■ada ef stripe tan tossa i
tfaabaz. Tils la It:
I POMPS
of Myrrii
FWCdfc,Wb.~
(to mm ooarrmcsoD
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Kates, W. C. Claremore Progress. And Rogers County Democrat (Claremore, Okla.), Vol. 22, No. 40, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 12, 1914, newspaper, November 12, 1914; Claremore, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc181518/m1/2/: accessed April 23, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.