ROYALTY AT THE FRONT.

The following letter, written by Prince Joachim of Prussia, the youngest son of the German Emperor, was addressed to a wounded comrade in arms by the Prince, himself at that time recovering from a wound suffered in battle. Prince Joachim, who is 24 years old, is a Lieutenant in the First Prussian Infantry Guards. In a tone of easy-going comradeship, not usually associated with the stern and imperious Hohenzollerns, the young Prince wrote to his friend and fellow-guardsman, Sergt. Karl Kummer, who had been sent, badly wounded, to the home of his sister at Teplitz:

My dear Kummer: How sincerely I rejoiced to receive your very solicitous letter! I was sure of Kummer for that; that no one could hold him back when the time came to do some thrashing! God grant that you may speedily recover, so that you can enter Potsdam, crowned with glory, admired, and envied. Who is nursing you?

The old proud First Guard Regiment has proved that it was ready to conquer and to die. Kummer, if I can in any way help you, I shall gladly do so, by providing anything that will make you comfortable. You know how happy I have always been for your devotion to the service, and how we two always were for action (Schwung). I, too, am proud to have been wounded for our beloved Fatherland, and I regret only that I am not permitted to be with the regiment. Well, may God take care of you! Your devoted

Joachim of Prussia.

Interesting, too, is a letter written on Sept. 5 by Ernest II., Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, who, besides being a Lieutenant of the Prussian Guard and Chief of the Eighth Infantry Regiment of Thuringia, is Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (since 1908), of Juliers, Cleves and Berg, Engern, and Westphalia; Landgrave in Thuringia, Margrave of Misnia, Count of Henneberg, Marche, Ravensberg, and Seigneur of Ravenstein and Tonna. In 1898 the Duke married Princess Adelaide of Schaumburg-Lippe, thus uniting two great German houses. His own house was started in 1655 by Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen. His letter follows:

We have lived through a great deal and done a great deal, marching, marching, continually, without rest or respite. On Aug. 10 we reached Willdorf, near Jülich, by train, and from the 12th of August we marched without a single day of rest except Aug. 16, which we spent in a Belgian village near Liége, until to-day, when we reached ——. These have been army marches such as history has never known.

The weather was fine, except that a broiling heat blazed down upon us. The regiment can point back to several days' marches of fifty kilometers ——. Everywhere our arrival created great amazement, in Louvain as well as in Brussels, into which the entire —— marched at one time. At first we were taken for Englishmen in almost every village, and we still are, because the inhabitants cannot realize that we have arrived so early. The Belgians, moreover, in the last few days almost invariably set fire to their own villages.

On Aug. 24 we first entered battle; I led a combined brigade consisting of ——. The regiment fought splendidly, and in spite of the gigantic strain put upon it, it is still in the best of spirits and full of the joy of battle. On that day I was for a long time in the sharpest rifle and artillery fire. Since that time there have been almost daily skirmishes and continual long marches; the enemy stalks ahead of us in seven-league boots.

On Aug. 26 we put behind us a march of exactly twenty-three hours, from 6:30 o'clock in the morning until 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew into the air.

After resting for three hours in a field of stubble, and after we had all eaten in common with the men in a field kitchen—as we usually do—we continued marching till dark.

The spirit among our men is excellent. To-night I am to have a real bed—the fourth, I believe, since the war began. To-day I undressed for the first time in eight days.

The battle of Lyck, the victory of which has heretofore been attributed solely to Field Marshal von Hindenburg, would appear to have been won by his subordinate, Gen. Curt E. von Morgen, according to the following letter, written by Gen. von Morgen to his friend Dr. Eschenburg, Mayor of Lübeck, the city where, in peace times, Gen. von Morgen was stationed as commander of the Eighty-first Infantry Brigade. Gen. von Morgen is 56 years old. He has been in the army since 1878, when he was appointed Lieutenant in the Sixty-third Infantry Brigade. He served in the German campaign in the Kamerun in 1894 and suppressed the rebellion there in 1896 and 1897. In the latter year he served also in the Thessaly campaign, attached to the headquarters of Edhem Pasha, and in 1898 he accompanied the German Emperor on the latter's journey to Palestine. The General wrote:

Suwalki, Sept. 13.

Yesterday, after a short fight, I captured Suwalki, and I am now seated in the Government Palace. This morning I marched into the city with my division, and was greeted at the city limits by a priest and the Mayor, who offered me bread and salt. (The Russian officials had fled.) It was a glorious moment for me. I have appointed a General Staff officer as Governor of the Government of Suwalki.

To-morrow we continue to march against the enemy. The army of Rennenkampf is completely destroyed. Thirty thousand men captured. Rennenkampf and the Commander in Chief, Nicholas Nicholaiewitch, fled from Insterburg in civilian garb.

The plan of the Russians was to get us into a pot, but it was frustrated. The Twelfth Russian Army Corps, which was advancing from the south to flank our army, was beaten by me on Sept. 7, at Bialla, and on Sept. 9 at Lyck and was forced back over the border.

You know that I always yearned for martial achievements. I had never expected them to be as great and glorious as these, however. I owe them in the first place to the vigorous offensive and bravery of my troops. I was probably foolhardy on Sept. 9, when I attacked a force thrice my superior in numbers, and in a fortified position; but even if I had been beaten I should have carried out the task assigned to me, for this Russian corps could no longer take part in the decisive battle. And so, in the evening, I sent in my last battalion and attacked by storm the village of Bobern, lying on the left wing. This, my last effort, must so have impressed the Russians that they began the retirement that very night. On the morning of the 10th of September the last trenches were taken.

My opponents were picked troops of the Russian Army—Finnish sharpshooters.

Health conditions with me are tolerable.

(In a later note, Gen. von Morgen added that Gen. von Hindenburg, his Commander in Chief, sent word that he would never forget the valorous deeds that had made possible these victories, and that even before the battle of Lyck the Iron Cross of the Second Class had been accorded to Gen. von Morgen. When he entered Lyck, Gen. von Morgen said, the inhabitants kissed his hands.)

A letter containing a personal touch was sent from the front in the early part of the war by Rudolf Herzog, one of Germany's greatest living poets and novelists. The letter, as originally published, was in rhymed verse. The poet, who visited this country about a year ago and was fêted by Germans in all the chief cities he visited, is the author of numerous novels and romances, dating from 1893 to the present. Herzog lives in a fine old castle overlooking the Rhine, mentioned in his letter, which is as follows:

It had been a wild week. The storm-wind swept with its broom of rain. It lashed us and splashed us, thrashed noses and ears, whistled through our clothing, penetrated the pores of our skin. And in the deluge—sights that made us shudder—gaunt skeleton churches, cracked walls, smoking ruins piled hillock high; cities and villages—judged, annihilated.

Of twenty bridges, there remained but beams rolled up by the waters—and yawning gaps.

Not a thought remained for the distant homeland and dear ones far away; the only thought, by day and by night: On to the enemy, come what may! No mind intent on any other goal. No time to lose! No time to lose! Haste! Haste!

And forward and backward and criss-cross through the gray Ardennes the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing day after day.

Captain of the Guard! You? From the Staff Headquarters?

He shouts my name as he approaches:

"Congratulations! Congratulations!"

And he waves a paper above a hundred heads.

"Telegram from home! Make way, there, you rascals! At the home of our poet—I've just learned it—a little war girl has arrived!"

I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins? * * *

Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.

My little girl! I have a little girl in my home! * * *

You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time. * * *

I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men, for a single heart-throb, listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's lips, stand there and smile around me in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness.

And yet it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.

The following is written from the front by Corp. T. Trainor:

We have had German cavalry thrown at us six times in the last four hours, and each time it has been a different body, so that they must have plenty to spare. There is no eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play with us, whatever the Germans may do.

The strain is beginning to tell on them more than on us, and you can see by the weary faces and trembling hands that they are beginning to break down.

One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what he had been through. The French are fighting hard all round us with a grit and go that will carry them through.

Have you ever seen a little man fighting a great, big, hulking giant who keeps on forcing the little chap about the place until the giant tires himself out, and then the little one, who has kept his wind, knocks him over? That's how the fighting here strikes me.

We are dancing about round the big German Army, but our turn will come. Our commanders know their business, and we shall come out on top all right.

Sergt. Major McDermott does not write under ideal literary conditions, but his style is none the worse for the inspiration furnished by the shrieking shell.

I am writing to you with the enemy's shells bursting and screaming overhead; but God knows when it will be posted, if at all.

We are waiting for something to turn up to be shot at, but up to now, though their artillery has been making a fiendish row all along our front, we haven't seen as much as a mosquito's eyelash to shoot at. That's why I am able to write, and some of us are able to take a bit of rest while the others keep "dick."

There is a fine German airship hanging around like a great blue bottle up in the sky, and now and then our gunners are trying to bring it down, but they haven't done it yet.

It's the quantity, not the quality of the German shells that is having effect on us, and it's not so much the actual damage to life as the nerve-racking row that counts for so much.

Townsmen who are used to the noise and roar of streets can stand it better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far the fittest men are those of regiments mainly recruited in the big cities.

A London lad near me says it's no worse than the roar of motor 'buses and other traffic in the city on a busy day.