Relief map of Great Britain and Ireland, the North Sea, English Channel, and Atlantic Ocean, with northwestern Europe: France, Belgium, Holland, and Scandinavia. The war-zone outlined on the map was declared on February 4, 1915. On May 7, the Lusitania entered the war zone southwest of Ireland.
Image text: Map Text:Atlantisch Ozean, Nord-See, Kanal - Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, English ChannelKriegs-Gebiets-Grenze - War-zone-boundaryCaption:Westl[ichen] Kriegschaupl[atz]: Nr. 97. Karte III: Die Gewässer um Großbritannien und Irland werden als Kriegsgebiet erklärt. Serie 47/4Western front: No. 97 Map III: The waters around Britain and Ireland will be declared a war zone. Series 47/4Reverse:Ausgabe des Kriegsfürsorgeamtes Wien IX.Zum Gloria-Viktoria AlbumSammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des VölkerkriegesWar Office Assistance Edition, Vienna IXFor Gloria Victoria albumCollection and reference book of international war
Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
Image text: Emil Huber 1915Reverse:Unsere FeldgrauenSerie II? preussischer Infanterie-SoldatPrussian Infantry SoldierLogo: K.E.B.
The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, one of Aesop's fables updated for the war by F. Sancha. In Aesop, a farmer slaughters the goose that lays a daily golden egg in expectation of seizing all its wealth at once. Sancha holds Germany responsible for the war that has destroyed its international trade, the source of its prosperity.
Image text: Comercio Aleman1912 1913 1914Signed: F. SanchaReverse:La Gallina de los Huevos de oro.Un avaro labrador que esperaba obtener por ese medio mayores proventos, mató una gallina que ponia cada dia un huevo de oro, y sólo descubrió que habia perdido una fuente de riqueza.El comercio ultramarino alemán que habia hecho tan rica a Alemania, ha quedado completamente destruido por la loca avaricia que le impulsó a desencadenar la guerra en Europa.The hen lays golden eggs.A miserly farmer who hoped to obtain by an even greater fortune, killed a goose that laid a golden egg every day, and only discovered he had lost his source of wealth.The German overseas trade that had so enriched Germany, has been completely destroyed by the mad greed that prompted him to launch the war in Europe.Actualidad de EsopoAesop TodayCopyright LondonPrinted in England.
His reach exceeds his grasp. A German fox eyes grapes — the cities of Calais, Paris, Verdun, and Petrograd — he hadn't conquered, and wouldn't in the war. The twining vines labeled Belgium, Italy, England, Russia, France, Japan, Serbia, Portugal, Montenegro, and Romania, the last of which joined the Allies in October 1916. In the distance is a rolling battlefield of smoking cannon and barbed wire. A postcard by F. Sancha.
Image text: Grapes: Calais, Paris, Verdun, PetrogradVines: Belgium, Italy, England, Russia, France, Japan, Serbia, Portugal, Montenegro, and RomaniaSigned: F. Sancha
"The Liverpool liner, Falaba, engaged in the African trade, with 90 sailors and 100 passengers aboard, was overtaken by a German submarine in St. George's Channel on March 29th [1915]. The captain was given five minutes to put his crew and passengers into lifeboats. At the expiration of the time limit, she was sunk by a torpedo and 111 persons, including women and children, were drowned." ((1), more)
"March 29th.—Back in Cambrin Left since last night. The sector is now known as ZI or Auchy Left: here the original names of sectors are kept. Larks sing in bright sunshine, and buds are opening. In the parapet of Old Boots Trench a German has been buried, it must have been in the autumn of 1914. The weather has exposed a pulpy arm; there was a wrist-watch on it. Some whimsical passer wound the watch, it went, it was a repeater; passers-by would give the winding a turn, but soon a souvenir-hunter took the watch." ((2), more)
"S——— also mentions the extreme exhaustion of the German soldiers, who were so weakened that a retreat of twenty miles in twenty-four hours tired them out. Their only food was coffee (made with roasted barley and maize) morning and night, with a vegetable soup in the middle of the day. They tried to steal from the local population the supplies furnished by the American Relief.The whole tract is a desert. Not a single animal left alive." ((3), more)
"The Secretary of State has received from Ambassador Sharp in Paris a graphic report of his visit to the scene of the horrible tragedy which occurred on the afternoon of Good Friday in a church by the explosion of a German shell projected from far back of the enemy lines a distance of more than seventy miles. The appalling destruction wrought by this shell is, as the Ambassador remarked, probably not equaled by any single discharge of any hostile gun in the cruelty and horrors of its result.In no other one spot in Paris, even where poverty had gathered on that holy day to worship, could destruction of life have been so great. Nearly a hundred mangled corpses lying in the morgues, with almost as many seriously wounded, attested to the measure of the toll exacted. Far up to the high, vaulted arches, between the flying buttresses well to the front of the church is a great gap in the wall, from which fell upon the heads of the devoted worshipers many tons of solid masonry. It was this that caused such a great loss of life." ((4), more)
(1) Great Britain declared the entire North Sea a military zone effective November 5, 1914 and imposed a blockade of Germany. On February 4, 1915, Germany responded by announcing a submarine warfare campaign in which all ships of Britain and its allies were subject to sinking without notice. German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg opposed the campaign, believing it would bring America into the war. The United States, Italy, and other neutral nations objected, but the campaign began February 18. Between Ireland and England, St. George's Channel is south of, and leads to, the Irish Sea. At its narrowest, between Rosslare Harbour, Ireland and Fishguard, Wales, the Channel is little more than 65 miles wide.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 141, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(2) Entry for March 29, 1916 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers and dozens of his comrades. Cambrin is west of La Bassée, France,in Artois. Bodies were buried, if at all, where they fell, beneath earth upended by explosions, into trench parapets. Because the Western Front moved very little during much of the war, bodies were exposed by weather, digging, and bombardment. The artist Otto Dix drew this horror. Many soldiers wrote of it, sometimes, as here, whimsically, touching a dead hand in passing or hanging a rifle on an exposed leg.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 187, 188, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) Entries from March 29 or 30, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant, living and writing in Paris. The 'retreat' of the German soldiers was part of Operation Alberich, a withdrawal to a shorter line and stronger defensive position, the Siegfried Zone, or Hindenburg Line. The winter of 1916–1917 was bitter, with coal and food shortages across Europe. The American Relief Committee had been founded in October, 1914 for the relief of the citizens of occupied Belgium. Its establishment by the energetic Herbert Hoover under the patronage of the Ambassadors of neutral Spain and United States is related in Hugh Gibson's animated Journal from our Legation in Belgium.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 241, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(4) Beginning of the April 3, 1918 report of William Sharp, United State Ambassador to France, to the Secretary of State concerning the March 29, 1918 German bombardment of Paris. The German advance in Operation Michael put Paris within the range of a new German gun. Among the 91 killed at the Church of St. Gervais were the Secretary of the Swiss Legation and Rose-Marie Ormond, niece and muse of American painter John Singer Sargent. Sixty-eight more were wounded. In a letter of October 20, 1914, Henry James wrote to Edith Wharton of the death of Ormond's husband Robert André-Michel, a French art historian and author of Avignon: the Frescoes of the Palace of the Popes: 'Mrs. C., who had been lunching with Emily Sargent, further brought me in the dismal news of the death of the so distinguished little French husband of her niece, Violet Ormond's daughter, the Rose-Marie whom Sargent so exquisitely painted a year ago; the said André Michel having been killed in one of these last engagements.' (Henry James Letters, Vol. IV: 1895–1916, pp. 722–723.)
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 93, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
