The Days of a Man D900 



Great soldiers have often told their men, after great battles 

 have been fought and great wars won, that they had "tasted 

 the salt of life." The salt of life! It can be nothing but the 

 salt of death which has lain for a brief instant on the tongue 

 of every soldier; a revolting salt which the soldier refuses to 

 swallow and only is compelled to with strange cries and demon- 

 like mutterings. Sometimes, poor mortal, all his struggles 

 The salt and his oaths are in vain. The dread salt is forced down his 

 0/ death throat and he dies. . . . Or he may not entirely succumb, but 

 carry traces to the grave. It is a very subtle poison, which 

 may lie hidden in the blood for many months and many years. 

 I believe it is a terrible thing. 



A series of atrocities, then apparently unprece- 

 dented, followed the arrival of the German military 

 contingent in China under the command of Count 

 Waldersee, after all need for severity had passed. 

 Conditions precedent to the despatch of the expedition 

 were described as follows by Henry N. Brailsford:^ 

 No veneration for the inner ruling caste which has made the 

 wars of Europe could survive a study of the memoirs which deal 

 with the life of Bismarck, and his successor. Prince Hohenlohe. 

 The Hohenlohe Memoirs, given to the wodd in 1906, expurgated 

 though they were, remind the reader of the books in which our 

 Puritan ancestors used to revel under such tides as "Satan's 

 BcTlin Invisible Wodd Revealed." The book is simply a dissection 

 intrigue of the personal ambitions and intrigues of the courtiers, generals, 

 and ministers who surrounded the German Emperor during 

 the years when Germany exercised a species of supremacy on 

 the Continent. One may take as typical of the mind of these 

 persons an entry by Prince Hohenlohe regarding the policy of 

 Germany toward France in 1889. There was at this time some 

 serious question of provoking war with France, and the main 

 reason for hurrying it forward was apparently the eagerness of 

 the German generalissimo. Count Waldersee, a most influential 

 person at court, to reap the glory which is to be had only by 

 leading armies in the field. There was unluckily no obvious 

 pretext for war, but on the other hand Count Waldersee, who 



1 "The War of Steel and Gold." 



c 28 ;] 



