stranger; his soul is detached from murderous passions, he sees the
abominable reality until his sufferings from it amount to agony. The two
scenes reproduced by the _Neue Zuercher Zeitung_ show us a muddy and
bloodstained trench, where German soldiers, like beasts in a
slaughter-house, die or await death with bitter words--and officers
getting drunk on champagne around a 42mm. mortar, laughing and getting
excited till they fall beneath the weight of sleep and fatigue.

From the first scene I take these terrible words of one of those who
wait in the trenches under fire of the machine guns, a _Dreissigjaehriger_
(man of thirty).

In my village they are laughing--they drink to each victory. They
slaughter us like butcher's cattle--and they say "It's war!" When
it is over, they are no fools, they will feast us for three years.
But the first cripple won't be grey headed before they will laugh
at his white hairs.

And the Uhlan, possessed by horror in the midst of the massacre, falls
on his knees and prays:

Thou who gavest life and takest it--how shall I recognize Thee? (In
these trenches strewn with mutilated bodies) I find Thee not. Does
the piercing cry of these thousands suffocated in the terrible
embrace of Death reach not up to Thee? Or is it lost in frozen
space? For whom does Thy Springtime blossom? For whom is the
splendor of Thy suns? For whom, O God? I ask it of thee in the name
of all those whose mouths are closed by courage and by fear in face
of the horror of Thy darkness: What heat is left within me? What
light of truth? Can this massacre be Thy will? Is it indeed Thy
will?

(_He loses consciousness and falls._)

A pain less lyrical, less ecstatic, more simple, more reflective, and
nearer to ourselves marks the sequence of _Feldpostbriefe_ of Dr. Albert
Klein, teacher in the Oberrealschule at Giessen and Lieutenant of the
Landwehr, killed on the 12th of February in Champagne.[38] Passing over
what are, perhaps, the most striking pages from the point of view of
artistic quality and power of thought, I will only give two extracts
from these letters which are likely to be of special interest to French
readers.

The first describes for us with an unusual frankness the moral condition
of the German army:

Brave, without care for his own life! Who is there among us that is
that? We all know too well our own worth and our