Two pages from the "Illustrated London News", December 25, 1915 (Christmas day). Two articles: one on commemorating the dead in France and the other about driving nails into statues of popular heroes in Germany.
Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA
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Notes:
Text from item: Considerable comment has been aroused by the craze in Germany for driving nails into large wooden statues of popular heroes, such as Hindenburg at Berlin, and von Tirpitz at Wilhelmshaven-- a privilege which can be exercised by all and sundry on payment of a small fee. "The inner meaning of this strange performance," writes a correspondent, "and the nature of the satisfaction derived by the operator, are a trifle obscure. We can hardly see in the new custom a revival of the magical practices of an earlier date, when, to the accompaniment of appropriate incantations, waxen figures were stuck with pins and otherwise maltreated; for in the latter case it was believed that bodily harm was caused to the individual whom the effigy represented. A possible key to the riddle, however, is furnished by a wooden idol in the British Museum" (the left one of the two shown above). At a hero's resting-place in the firing-line: A French soldier putting flowers on the grave of a comrade buried in the trench-parapet. Association in the perils of war binds close the ties of friendship, and those who fall are not forgotten by their comrades. Whenever possible, their graves are carefully tended, through it is not often that they are so accessible as in this case, where the French soldier's dead comrade lies in the actual parapet of the trenches. Every day a comrade, picking wild-flowers from the crest of the trenches, sets them by the cross in memory of the dead.
