I have been at home for more than a year now, and cannot return to the front.  Apparently the British Government have given their word to the neutral countries that prisoners who escape from Germany, and are assisted by the neutral countries, will not be allowed to return to the fighting line.  So even if my shoulder were well again, I could not go back to fight.

Ted and I parted in London, for I came back to Canada before he did.  He has since rejoined his family in Toronto.  I have heard from a number of the boys in Germany.  Bromley tried to escape again, but was captured, and is now at a camp called Soltau.  John Keith and Croak also tried, but failed.  Little Joe, the Italian boy who enlisted with me at Trail, has been since exchanged—­insane!  Percy Weller, Sergeant Reid, and Hill, brother of the British Reservist who gave us our first training, have all been exchanged.

* * *

I am sorry that I cannot go back.  Not that I like fighting—­for I do not; but because I believe every man who is physically fit should have a hand in this great clean-up—­every man is needed!  From what I have seen of the German people, I believe they will resist stubbornly, and a war of exhaustion will be a long affair with a people so well trained and organized.  The military class know well that if they are forced to make terms unfavorable to Germany, their power will be gone forever, and they would rather go down to defeat before the Allied nations than be overthrown by their own people.  There is no doubt that the war was precipitated by the military class in Germany because the people were growing too powerful.  So they might as well fight on, with a chance of victory, as to conclude an unsatisfactory peace and face a revolution.

The German people have to be taught one thing before their real education can begin.  They have to be made to see—­and the Allied armies are making it plainer every day—­that war is unprofitable; that their army, great though it is, may meet a greater; that heavy losses may come to their own country.  They need to be reminded that he that liveth by the sword may die by the sword!

The average German thinks that only through superior military strength can any good thing come to a nation.  All their lives they have been taught that, and their hatred of England has been largely a result of their fear of England’s superior strength.  They cannot understand that England and the other Allies have no desire to dominate German affairs.  They do not believe that there is an ethical side to this war.  The Germans are pitifully dense to ethical values.  They are not idealists or sentimentalists, and their imagination is not easily kindled.

Added to this, they have separated themselves from religion.  Less than two per cent of the men attend church, and if the extracts we read from the sermons preached in their churches is a fair sample of the teaching given there, the ninety-eight who stay at home are better off than the two who go!