THE "FIDDLER'S TRUCE" AT ARRAS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 92, 11 January 1918, Page 6

THE "FIDDLER'S TRUCE" AT ARRAS

CONCERTS IN "NO MAN'S LAND."

Twenty miles away the Prussians and the Canadians were struggling in tho dust and mud for tho battered suburbs of Lens, but the trenches which were enjoying tho "Fiddler's Truce" were not marked to bo taken by:the staff officers of either army, and the only sign of war was the growling of the big guns far away. Here, too, Canadian opposed Prussian, but they did not fight until the death of Henry Schulman, killed by a most regrettable accident. He was only ii private mid not sufficiently famous as a violinist to have his death recorded in the musical journals of the world, but along the trenches his taking off is still being discussed as one of. the real tragedies of the war. : Late last fall, after the Somme offensive was over, three Canadian regiments arrived on the Arras front and dug themselves into the brown mud to wait until spring made another advance practicable. Two hundred feet away were three Prussian regiments. There was ■ little real fighting. When the routine of trench life became too monotonous a company would T)lazo away at the other trenches for a few minutes. At night it was so quiet that conversation in one trench carried over the other, and there was a mod deal of good-natured banter back ■ind forth. The Canadians wore especially pleased-by tho nightly concerts of tho Germans, and applauded heartily the spirited fiddling of one hidden musician. The rest of tho story, can hest ho told by Corporal Harry Seaton, in tho New York "Evening Mail": ' . "One ni"ht wo held up a piece or white cloth as ii sign of true/' he said "With permission of our colonel I called out and asked the Boche if wo couldn't have ■i bit of a concert. It w«s agreed, and Schulman—that was the tiddler's namecrawled out from his trench. One or two of our Johnnies crawled out, too, just as a sign of good faith. "Believe me, everyone eirjoyod the rest of that evening, and when things grow tniipfc next day somebody yelled tor the fiddler to strike up a tune He was a. cobbler in Quebec before the war and two of our Johnnies Qknow him and his TV-ifo and kids. It didn't take must coaxing after that, and he came out on the'strop of 'No Man's Land' and played every night- \ , , , "On February 23 wo were ordered on to another part of the field and another raiment took our old trendies. Of course in the hurry of departure uobodv thought of Schulman "Tlmf night he brought his stool out lls usual, but. before he could draw bow n'ross tho strings, the strangers filled him full of .lead. Of course, they didn t ''""IV chaplain told use the story next ,I, IV and wo took up a collection to send hack to the family, in Berlin. I wonder if they ever got it!