In shipping returns and the like we are given averages; why are we told nothing at all of the milder experiences of our soldier prisoners?  It would not make us less resolved to do all that we can to better the lot of those who are suffering insult and torture, and to exact full retribution from the enemy.  And it would bring some hope to those whose husbands or children or friends are in German military prisons, and who are racked every day by tales of what, in fact, are exceptional atrocities.

Or take the question of the conduct of German officers.  We know that the Prussian military Government, in its approved handbooks, teaches its officers the use of brutality and terror as military weapons.  The German philosophy of war, of which this is a part, is not really a philosophy of war; it is a philosophy of victory.  For a long time now the Germans have been accustomed to victory, and have studied the arts of breaking the spirit and torturing the mind of the peoples whom they invade.  Their philosophy of war will have to be rewritten when the time comes for them to accommodate their doctrine to their own defeat.  In the meantime they teach frightfulness to their officers, and most of their officers prove ready pupils.  There must be some, one would think, here and there, if only a sprinkling, who fall short of the Prussian doctrine, and are betrayed by human feeling into what we should recognize as decent and honourable conduct.  And so there are; only we do not hear of them through the press.  I should like to tell two stories which come to me from personal sources.  The first may be called the story of the Christmas truce and the German captain.  In the lull which fell on the fighting at the time of the first Christmas of the War, a British officer was disquieted to notice that his men were fraternizing with the Germans, who were standing about with them in No-man’s land, laughing and talking.  He went out to them at once, to bring them back to their own trenches.  When he came up to his men, he met a German captain who had arrived on the same errand.  The two officers, British and German, fell into talk, and while they were standing together, in not unfriendly fashion, one of the men took a snapshot photograph of them, copies of which were afterwards circulated in the trenches.  Then the men were recalled to their duty, on the one side and the other, and, after an interval of some days, the war began again.  A little time after this the British officer was in charge of a patrol, and, having lost his way, found himself in the German trenches, where he and his men were surrounded and captured.  As they were being marched off along the trenches, they met the German captain, who ordered the men to be taken to the rear, and then, addressing the officer without any sign of recognition, said in a loud voice, ‘You, follow me!’ He led him by complicated ways along a whole series of trenches and up a sap, at the end of which he stopped, saluted, and, pointing with his hand, said ‘Your trenches are there.  Good day.’