* * * * *

A letter written from Hamburg in February, and others from Coblenz are tragic reading: 

" ...  We shall soon have nothing more to eat.  We earn no money, absolutely none; it is sad but true.  Many people are dying here from inanition or under-feeding.”

Or, take these from Neugersdorf, in Saxony: 

“We cannot send you any butter, for we have none to eat ourselves.  For three weeks we have not been able to get any potatoes.  So we only have turnips to eat, and now there are no more to be had.  We do not know what we can get for dinner this week, and if we settle to get our food at the Public Food-Kitchen we shall have to stand two hours for it.”

“Here is February once more—­one month nearer to peace.  Otherwise all is the same.  Turnips!  Turnips!  Very few potatoes, only a little bread, and no thought of butter or meat; on the other hand, any quantity of hunger.  I understand your case is not much better on the Somme.”

Or this from a man of the Ersatz Battalion, 19th F.A.R., Dresden: 

“Since January 16th I have been called up and put into the Foot Artillery at Dresden.  On the 16th we were first taken to the Quartermaster’s Stores, where 2,000 of us had to stand waiting in the rain from 2.30 to 6.30....  On the 23rd I was transferred to the tennis ground.  We are more than 100 men in one room.  Nearly all of us have frozen limbs at present.  The food, too, is bad; sometimes it cannot possibly be eaten.  Our training also is very quick, for we are to go into the field in six weeks.”

Or these from Itzehoe and Hanover: 

“Could you get me some silk?  It costs 8s. a metre here....  To-day, the 24th, all the shops were stormed for bread, and 1,000 loaves were stolen from the bakery.  There were several other thousand in stock.  In some shops the windows were smashed.  In the grocers’ shops the butter barrels were rolled into the street.  There were soldiers in civilian dress.  The Mayor wanted to hang them.  There are no potatoes this week.”

“To-day, the 27th, the bakers’ shops in the ——­ Road were stormed....  This afternoon the butchers’ shops are to be stormed.”

“If only peace would come soon!  We have been standing to for an alarm these last days, as the people here are storming all the bakers’ shops.  It is a semi-revolution.  It cannot last much longer.”

To such a pass have the Kaiser and the Junker party brought their countrymen!  Here, no doubt, are some of the recipients of such letters among the peaceful working groups in shabby green-grey, scattered along the roads of France.  As we pass, the German N.C.O. often looks up to salute the officer who is with us, and the general aspect of the men—­at any rate of the younger men—­is cheerfully phlegmatic.  At least they are safe from the British guns, and at least they have enough to eat.  As to this, let me quote, by way of contrast, a few passages from letters written by prisoners in a British camp to their people at home.  One might feel a quick pleasure in the creature-comfort they express but for the burning memory of our own prisoners, and the way in which thousands of them have been cruelly ill-treated, tormented even, in Germany—­worst of all, perhaps, by German women.