It is not only that the men lack this moral preparation for war.  Their system of fighting is demoralizing.  “They come on in close formation, thousands of them, just like sheep being driven to the slaughter,” is the description that nine soldiers out of every ten give of the Germans going into action.  “We just mow them down in heaps,” says an artilleryman.  “Lord, even a woman couldn’t miss hitting them,” is the comment from the Infantry.  And as for the cavalry:  “Well, we just makes holes in them,” adds one of the Dragoons.  At first they didn’t take cover at all, but just marched into action with their drums beating and bands playing, “like a blooming parade,” as Atkins puts it.  After the first slaughter, however, they shrank from the attack, and there is ample evidence of eyewitnesses that the German infantry often had to be lashed into battle by their officers.  “I saw a colonel striking his own men with his sword to prevent them running away,” is one of the many statements.  Revolvers, too, were freely used for the same purpose.

But, generally speaking, there is iron discipline in the Kaiser’s army.  The men obey their officers implicitly.  Trooper E. Tugwell, of the Berwicks, tells this little story of a cavalry charge from which a German infantry regiment bolted—­all but one company, whose officers ordered them to stand:  “They faced round without attempting to fire a shot, and stood there like statues to meet the onslaught of our men.  Our chaps couldn’t help admiring their fine discipline, but there’s not much room for sentiment in war, and we rode at them with the lance, and swept them away.”  “They are big fellows, and, in a way, brave,” writes Private P. Case of the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, describing one of their attacks; “they must be brave, or they would not have kept advancing when they saw their dead so thick that they were practically standing up.”  “Their officers simply won’t let them surrender,” says another writer, “and so long as there’s an officer about they’ll stand like sheep and be slaughtered by the thousand.”  The essential difference between the German soldiers and our own is in the officering and training, and it is admirably expressed by Private Burrell, Northumberland Fusiliers. “We are led; they are driven,"[F] is Burrell’s epigram.

According to other letter writers, the German soldiers are absolutely tyrannized over by their officers.  They are horribly ill-used, badly fed,[G] overworked, constantly under the lash.  “They hate their officers like poison, and fear them ten times more than they fear death,” says Private Martin King.  “Most of the prisoners that I’ve seen are only fit for the hospital, and many of them will never be fit for anything else this side of the grave.  Their officers don’t seem to have any consideration for the men at all, and we have a suspicion that the heavy losses of German officers aren’t all due to our fire.  There was one brought in who had certainly been hit by one of their own bullets, and in the back too.”  Other soldiers say the same, and add that if it weren’t for dread of their officers the Germans would surrender wholesale.  “Take the officers away, and their regiments fall to pieces,” is the dictum of one of the Somerset Light Infantry, “and that’s why we always pick off the German officers first.”