Golden Lads | Page 2

cause itself.
Are you indicting a nation?
No, only a military system that ordered the slow sapping of friendly
neighboring powers.
Only the host of "tourists," clerks, waiters, gentlemanly officers, that
betrayed the hospitality of people of good will.
Only an army that practised mutilation and murder on children, and

mothers, and old people,--and that carried it through coldly,
systematically, with admirable discipline.
I believe there are multitudes of common soldiers who are sorry that
they have outraged the helpless.
An army of half a million men will return to the home-land with very
bitter memories. Many a simple German of this generation will be
unable to look into the face of his own child without remembering
some tiny peasant face of pain--the child whom he bayoneted, or whom
he saw his comrade bayonet, having failed to put his body between the
little one and death.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE CONQUERORS
PAGE THE SPY 3 THE ATROCITY 26 BALLAD OF THE
GERMANS 45 THE STEAM ROLLER 48 MY EXPERIENCE WITH
BAEDEKER 66
GOLDEN LADS
THE PLAY-BOYS OF BRITTANY 79 "ENCHANTED
CIGARETTES" 95 WAS IT REAL? 113 "CHANTONS, BELGES!
CHANTONS!" 127 FLIES: A FANTASY 152 WOMEN UNDER
FIRE 168 HOW WAR SEEMS TO A WOMAN 192 LES
TRAVAILLEURS DE LA GUERRE 234 REMAKING FRANCE 253
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Play-boys of the Western Front Frontispiece
Peasants' cottages burned by Germans 8
The home of a German spy near Coxyde Bains, Belgium 13

The green pass, used only by soldiers and officers of the Belgian Army
33
Church in Termonde which the writer saw 42
One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs 51
Fifteenth century Gothic church in Nieuport 69
Sailors lifting a wounded comrade into the motor-ambulance 87
Door chalked by the Germans 105
Street fighting in Alost 123
Belgian officer on the last strip of his country 134
A Belgian boy soldier in the uniform of the first army which served at
Liège and Namur 139
Belgians in their new Khaki uniform, in praise of which they wrote a
song 145
Breton sailors ready for their noon meal in a village under daily shell
fire 187
Sleeping quarters for Belgian soldiers 206
Belgian soldiers telephoning to an anti-aircraft gun the approach of a
German taube 215
Postcards sketched and blocked by a Belgian workman, A. Van Doorne
229

INTRODUCTION
By Theodore Roosevelt

On August 4, 1914, the issue of this war for the conscience of the world
was Belgium. Now, in the spring of 1916, the issue remains Belgium.
For eighteen months, our people were bidden by their representative at
Washington to feel no resentment against a hideous wrong. They were
taught to tame their human feelings by polished phrases of neutrality.
Because they lacked the proper outlet of expression, they grew
indifferent to a supreme injustice. They temporarily lost the capacity to
react powerfully against wrongdoing.
But today they are at last becoming alive to the iniquity of the crushing
of Belgium. Belgium is the battleground of the war on the western front.
But Belgium is also the battleground of the struggle in our country
between the forces of good and of evil. In the ranks of evil are ranged
all the pacifist sentimentalists, the cowards who possess the gift of
clothing their cowardice in soothing and attractive words, the
materialists whose souls have been rotted by exclusive devotion to the
things of the body, the sincere persons who are cursed with a deficient
sense of reality, and all who lack foresight or who are uninformed.
Against them stand the great mass of loyal Americans, who, when they
see the right, and receive moral leadership, show that they have in their
souls as much of the valor of righteousness as the men of 1860 and of
1776. The literary bureau at Washington has acted as a soporific on the
mind and conscience of the American people. Fine words, designed to
work confusion between right and wrong, have put them to sleep. But
they now stir in their sleep.
The proceeds from the sale of this book are to be used for a charity in
which every intelligent American feels a personal interest. The training
of maimed soldiers in suitable trades is making possible the
reconstruction of an entire nation. It is work carried on by citizens of
the neutral nations. The cause itself is so admirable that it deserves
wide support. It gives an outlet for the ethical feelings of our people,
feelings that have been unnaturally dammed for nearly two years by the
cold and timid policy of our Government.
The testimony of the book is the first-hand witness of an American
citizen who was present when the Army of Invasion blotted out a little

nation. This is an eye-witness report on the disputed points of this war.
The author saw