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when the time came we shook hands and saluted each other, returning to our trenches. I went up into the trenches on Christmas night. One wouldn't have thought there was a war going on. All day our soldiers and the Germans were talking and singing half-way between the opposing trenches. The space was filled with English and Germans handing one another cigars. At night we sang carols." Another records how souvenirs and food were exchanged, and how jollification and football were indulged in with the Germans. But "next day we got an order that all communication and friendly intercourse must cease." The Germans had said frankly they were tired of the war, the English soldiers wished to be their friends, but far away were a few elderly men who wanted the fighting to go on. Into what depths the need of exacerbating hate may lead one is shown by the following extract from a telegram headed, "British Headquarters, France," which I take from the _Daily News_ of December 23, 1915: No doubt the Bosches will have plenty of Christmas trees, as they did last year, but, without attaching too much credence to the reports of an increasing difficulty in maintaining their rations. I think it is quite safe to say that they will fare very much more frugally than our own men. But may not their own consciousness of the fact result in an outburst of "strafing?" The principle that the next best thing to not getting well served yourself is to spoil the other fellow's enjoyment is a good sound Hunnish axiom. There will certainly be no amenities nor anything in the nature of a truce so far as the British are concerned. All ranks are bidden to remember that war is war and that the Germans invariably have some sinister motive in all they do, especially under the guise of a gush of friendly sentiment.--Reuter. The last sentences must surely, in any generous heart (if the moral destruction of war has left us such), produce a feeling of acute shame. In all the multitude of truces that occurred at Christmas, 1914, I have not seen a single case of German treachery reported. What is it that is feared in the truce? "In some places," said a German officer, "we have had to change our men several times. They get too damn friendly."[50] "If we don't take care," said an English officer that Christmas, "there will be a permanent peace without generals or c.o.'s having a say in the matter." Is that th
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