ocities.

Or take the question of the conduct of German officers. We know that the
Prussian military Government, in its approved handbooks, teaches its
officers the use of brutality and terror as military weapons. The German
philosophy of war, of which this is a part, is not really a philosophy
of war; it is a philosophy of victory. For a long time now the Germans
have been accustomed to victory, and have studied the arts of breaking
the spirit and torturing the mind of the peoples whom they invade. Their
philosophy of war will have to be rewritten when the time comes for them
to accommodate their doctrine to their own defeat. In the meantime they
teach frightfulness to their officers, and most of their officers prove
ready pupils. There must be some, one would think, here and there, if
only a sprinkling, who fall short of the Prussian doctrine, and are
betrayed by human feeling into what we should recognize as decent and
honourable conduct. And so there are; only we do not hear of them
through the press. I should like to tell two stories which come to me
from personal sources. The first may be called the story of the
Christmas truce and the German captain. In the lull which fell on the
fighting at the time of the first Christmas of the War, a British
officer was disquieted to notice that his men were fraternizing with the
Germans, who were standing about with them in No-man's land, laughing
and talking. He went out to them at once, to bring them back to their
own trenches. When he came up to his men, he met a German captain who
had arrived on the same errand. The two officers, British and German,
fell into talk, and while they were standing together, in not unfriendly
fashion, one of the men took a snapshot photograph of them, copies of
which were afterwards circulated in the trenches. Then the men were
recalled to their duty, on the one side and the other, and, after an
interval of some days, the war began again. A little time after this the
British officer was in charge of a patrol, and, having lost his way,
found himself in the German trenches, where he and his men were
surrounded and captured. As they were being marched off along the
trenches, they met the German captain, who ordered the men to be taken
to the rear, and then, addressing the officer without any sign of
recognition, said in a loud voice, 'You, follow me!' He led him by
complicated ways along a whole series of trenches and up a sap, at the
end of whic