Walter Lanyon, serving with the 89th Division in France, picked up a copy of a German propaganda leaflet, 'How to Stop the War', dropped in great quantities over the American lines, and enclosed it in a letter to his brother dated 21 October. The Carthage paper printed the letter and reproduced the leaflet in full, under the headline 'WANTED YANKS TO DESERT' and the subhead 'Propaganda, However, Didn't Make Any Impression Upon Americans — Describes Shell Wrecked Church'. Lanyon writes: 'Today an enemy airplane passed over and dropped out a million or so leaflets all over the land — it was German propaganda, and as I came into possession of a copy I am sending it on to you believing it will be interesting to see how completely off [the mark it is].' He describes a church wrecked by shelling, with many of the crosses shattered, and then a grave: 'In a narrow trench, quite close to [me], [is] a German grave — buried where he fell in battle no doubt, and some wit has thrown a string of sausages over the cross which marks his last resting place — and thus the dance goes on.' He calls it making light of that which is serious, jesting with the most sacred of things, and 'smearing the whole land with a great burning hatred which will take ages to remove.' He closes: 'I hope you received your helmets which I sent some days ago, and [am] going to try to get you a camouflaged one which will give you an idea of how far the craze really went.' The leaflet itself, as reproduced, addresses American soldiers directly: 'Do your part to [put] an end to the war! Put an end to your part of it. Stop fighting! That's the simplest [way]. You can do it, you soldiers — just stop fighting and the war will end of its own accord. You are not fighting for anything anyway. What does it [matter to you] who owns Metz or Strassburg? You never saw those towns nor knew the people in them.' It warns that if they keep on fighting 'in the hope of getting a look at those old German fortresses you may never [see] home again', and urges them to 'slip across No Man's Land' to be taken prisoner and 'exchanged and taken home'. The brother's given name is destroyed in the OCR of this clipping.

On the morning he arrived at Montpellier, 5 March, Walter Lanyon wrote to his mother, Mrs. S. D. Lanyon of Carthage, Missouri. She received the letter the day before the Carthage paper printed it under the heading 'LANYON AT MONTPELLIER — Carthage Soldier Begins Studies at French University'. He writes: 'We arrived in Montpellier this morning. Believe I am going to enjoy my school work fine, it is so beautiful here and every inducement is offered to make it attractive.' Of the university: 'We are going to school in a grand old university. I shall be proud to say that I attended school there. It is really a great, great opportunity and well worth taking advantage of while waiting for the division to go home — 150,000 men tried to get it. I think Harry Stewart went to another university, but this is the prize of them all.' On his studies: 'My university work will consist of advanced French literature, possibly study of Moliere and some of the other classic authors. I will also have a good stiff course in diction and construction and when my outfit is ready to sail I will rejoin them.' On the place and on his mother: 'Montpellier, as you probably know, is on the Mediterranean sea and is ideally located for spring. I wish you might be with me. We would enjoy it so much together.' On his terms: 'I have a nice bed room and salon (drawing room), all for 50 francs per month, which is $10. The government pays all expenses and gives us full salary. I think it is one of the finest things that was ever instituted.' Harry Stewart, named in the letter as a fellow soldier Lanyon believes went to a different university under the same scheme, is not otherwise recorded in this corpus.

The Carthage paper printed an eyewitness account of the revolution in Luxembourg 'told by Walter Lanyon', who was there with a headquarters detachment and was, in the paper's words, 'an eye witness' to it. He called it a comic opera revolution, 'as he expressed it'. The headline runs 'COMIC OPERA REVOLUTION EVENT IN LUXEMBURG', with the subhead reporting that France interfered and placed the Queen back on the throne. In his letter he tells of arriving somewhere, of men who 'were with us in' — one name partially legible as 'Chester Dip[—]' — of being in Germany, and of someone being 'well and looking fine'. The detachment is described in the surviving text in connection with police duties and volunteers. The same page carries the official proclamations, in fragments: declaring Luxembourg a republic, and hailing 'an era of peace, of liberty [and] prosperity for our little country', closing 'Long live the free people of Luxemburg'. This scan's OCR is the poorest in this batch — two unrelated columns are interleaved line by line, so most of Lanyon's account does not survive as continuous text. Only fragments that read cleanly are quoted above, with gaps marked. The image is a strong candidate for re-OCR: the story behind it is substantial and mostly unrecovered. Note on dating: the paper printed this on 27 March 1919, but the revolution Lanyon witnessed happened earlier — see the date claims. The article node's own title gives the publication date as though it were the event date.