Read "With the French in France and Salonika" by Richard Harding Davis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
ATHENS, November, 1915.
At home we talk glibly of a world war. But beyond speculating in munitions and as to how many Americans will be killed by the next submarine, and how many notes the President will write about it, we hardly appreciate that this actually is a war of the world, that all over the globe, every ship of state, even though it may be trying to steer a straight course, is being violently rocked by it. Even the individual, as he moves from country to country, is rocked by it, not violently, but continuously. It is in loss of time and money he feels it most. And as he travels, he learns, as he cannot learn from a map, how far-reaching are the ramifications of this war, in how many different ways it affects every one. He soon comes to accept whatever happens as directly due to the war -- even when the deck steward tells him he cannot play shuffle-board because, owing to the war, there is no chalk.