A GERMAN DESERTER'S
WAR EXPERIENCE
A GERMAN DESERTER'S
WAR EXPERIENCE
TRANSLATED BY J. KOETTGEN
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
MCMXVII
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
B. W. HUEBSCH
Published, April, 1917
Second printing, April, 1917
Third printing, June, 1917
Fourth printing, July, 1917
Fifth printing, August, 1917
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The following narrative first appeared in German in the columns of theNew Yorker Volkszeitung, the principal organ of the German speakingSocialists in the United States. Its author, who escaped from Germanyand military service after 14 months of fighting in France, is anintelligent young miner. He does not wish to have his name made public,fearing that those who will be offended by his frankness might venttheir wrath on his relatives. Since his arrival in this country hisfriends and acquaintances have come to know him as an upright andtruthful man whose word can be relied upon.
The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier in thepresent war aroused great interest when the story presented in thesepages to the English speaking reader was published in serial form. Forhere was an historian of the war who had been through the horrors of thecarnage as one of the "Huns," one of the "Boches"; a soldier who had notabdicated his reason; a warrior against his will, who nevertheless hadto conform to the etiquette of war; a hater of militarism for whom therewas no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime andvermin, inhuman toil and degradation. Moreover, he was found to be nomean observer of men and things. His technical training at a school of[Pg vi]mining enabled him to obtain a much clearer understanding of the war ofposition than the average soldier possesses.
Most soldiers who have been in the war and have written down theirexperiences have done so in the customary way, never questioning for amoment the moral justification of war. Not so our author. He could notpersuade his conscience to make a distinction between private and publicmorality, and the angle from which he views the events he describes istherefore entirely different from that of other actual observers of andparticipators in war. His story also contains the first Germandescription of the retreat of the Teutonic armies after the battle ofthe Marne. The chief value of this soldier's narrative lies, however, inhis destructive, annihilating criticism of the romance and fabledvirtues of war. If some of the incidents related in this book appear tobe treated too curtly it is solely due to this author's limited literarypowers. If, for instance, he does not dwell upon his inner experiencesduring his terrible voyage to America in the coal bunker of a Dutch shipit is because he is not a literary artist, but a simple workman.
The translator hopes that he has succeeded in reproducing faithfully thesubstance and the spirit of the story, and that this little book will