Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1915 — QUEER TRUCES DURING BATTLES [ARTICLE]

QUEER TRUCES DURING BATTLES

Maoris Who Were Fighting British Decided to Take a Day Off When Ammunition Ran Out. What President Wilson and the Pope of Rome failed to accomplish, the soldiers fighting in France and Flanders this Christmas —the Tommies, the Piou-Pious, and the Bosches —did of their own accord. All the world knows the wonderful story by now. How at first one or two men on either side, greatly daring, peeped above the death trenches at one another, and smiled dumb greetings. How then, by degrees, confidence once established grew, until both sides were fraternizing, helping to tend one another’s wounded, burying each other’s dead; and how when these sad and grim tasks were accomplished, they started playing football, shared their little luxuries, forced cigarettes and cigars on each other, and generally had a “high old time” together. It seems passing strange in these days, but it has often happened afbretimes. In the Crimea, for instance, various .observers have recorded how, on several different Sundays, a similar truce by consent was arranged. The Russians had tobacco in plenty, which our Tommies lacked. They gave their enemies in exchange tallow candles, which were plentiful in the British lines. The Russians did not want them for lighting. They ate them; sucking and biting the tallow from the wicks, as children do sugarsticks.

One of the queerest informal truces on record occurred during the first Maori war. For three days the Maoris strongly entrenched ia one ol their stockaded camps, or “pahs,” had been firing at the British, who were similarly entrenched behind their own lines, and who, of course, returned the enemy fire with interest.. \

On the morning of the fourth day, which chanced to be a Sunday, our soldiers were amazed to see the Maoris, dressed in their best clothes, come trooping out of their pah, unarmed, -and making friendly gestures. Thinking, naturally, that they wished to surrender, an officer hurried forward to meet them, carrying : white flag. But the Maori chief explained that they had no intention whatever of throwing up the. sponge. Only they did not wish to fight that day, and hoped that the British felt likewise. ’ officer, hardly knowing, wlmt to do, demurred? at first, but eventually fell in with the suggestion, adding jjs an afterthought that he was J'Jjßtmed to see that they had so great a respect for the white man’s Sabbath. ?; ": ' . "Oh,, it is not that,” promptly re-

plied the chief. “The fact is that we have run out of ammunition, and so cannot fight today. Tomorrow we have a fresh supply coming in. Then we will go ahead again with the war.’’ - “Tell you what, though,’’ he resumed, after a moment’s pause, struck suddenly by what he evidently conceived to be an exceedingly brilliant idea, “if you will lend us some ammunition we can start, again, and the day won’t be wasted.” ' Naturally the officer was- obliged to decline this naive proposal, and on reporting the matter he was censured for not at once making the whole lot of them prisoners. His reply was that he would rather be cashiered than take so mean an advantage of a brave and chivalrous enemy, who had trusted him, and who, after all, as their conduct plainly showed, were in some things little more than grown-up children. Towards the end of the last siege of Paris by the Germans in 1870-71, the custom grew up of observing an informal armistice of about an hour’s duration at sundown, when the hungry citizens, or some of.them at all events, used to come out and purchase sausages from the Prussians and Bavarians in the advanced trenches at about 10 times their normal price. After a while, however, the custom came to the knowledge of Von Moltke, who effectually and promptly put a stop to it by shooting some half dozen or more of the amateur truce makers.

Finally, it may be mentioned, that during the American civil war the commanders on both sides had the greatest difficulty in preventing their men from fraternizing after the day’s fighting. Even the sentries, in many instances, used to meet together and exchange gossip and “chaws” of tobacco on moonlight nights. But then, of course, these men, though nominally enemies, were really brothers, citizens of the same country, speaking the same language.—Pearson’s Weekly,