ctly over the town and went on until he was
directly over the extensive barracks just outside. Freiburg is a
compact city of 85,000 inhabitants, and it would have been easy to
have caused damage, and probably loss of life to the civilian
population. It was clear to me in my front-row position and to the
natives, with many of whom I afterwards discussed the matter, that
the Frenchman was careful to avoid damaging the town, and circled
directly over the barracks on which he dropped all his bombs. The
Freiburg papers said little about the raid, but to my surprise when
I reached Frankfurt and Cologne a week later, newspaper notices
were still stuck about the cities calling upon Germans to witness
again the dastardly methods of the enemy who attack the inhabitants
of peaceful towns outside of the zone of operations.

The French very properly and effectively practised reprisals later,
but the Germans believe that the shoe is on the other foot. And so
it is in, everything connected with the war. The Germans tell you
that they use poisonous gas because the French used it; in fact,
only their good luck in capturing some of the French gas generators
enabled them to learn the method. Britain, not Germany, violates
the laws of the sea. It was the Belgians who were cruel to German
troops, especially the Belgian women and the Belgian children.

When the Verdun offensive came to a standstill a spirit of
restlessness developed which was reflected in the Reichstag, where
a few Social Democrats attacked the Government because they
believed that Germany could now make peace if she wished, and that
further bloodshed would be for a war of conquest, advocated by the
annexationists.

During the succession of German military victories, especially in
the first part of the war, there was plenty of "front copy" both as
news and filler. Some of the accounts were excellent. The reader
seldom got the idea, however, that German soldiers were being
killed and wounded, and after a time most of the battle
descriptions contained much of soft nocturnal breezes whispering in
the moonlight, but precious few real live details of fighting.

Regarding this point, a German of exceptional information of the
world outside his own country expressed to me his utter amazement
at the accounts appearing in the British Press of the hard life in
the trenches. "I don't see how they hope to get men to enlist when
they write such discouraging stuff," he said