the ground.
Nothing could exceed the kindness shown to Canadian officers by their
English brethren. We are all one in aim, in spirit, and in that
indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the
British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds
together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are
invisible.

This afternoon we are taking a good sound rest at the house of a
retired French farmer, who has three sons fighting in the country. He
is as game as game, and says he is just holding things together until
the war is over. He is 75 and remembers the horrors of the last war, in
which he fought in the artillery.... Our "look-out" men are ever on the
alert, for we never take a meal or rest altogether. Sentries and
signalers are always posted before we dismount. The cure joined us at
the farmer's house and we enjoyed an excellent repast, with the honor of
two local gendarmes who had brought in a German spy caught red-handed
robbing the house of a peasant the night before and attempting to murder
her. The man was dressed as a French peasant. Upon him we found evidence
that he was a spy. Summary procedure made it easy to decide that the
sentence of drumhead court-martial was death. And here again is an
instance of the extraordinary clemency of the French clergy. The cure
pleaded that the spy should not be shot and the extreme penalty
inflicted. So I consented (not being a man of blood) to the prisoner
being sent to the nearest French military post, to be executed or not,
as the General shall order.

I really believe that all of the evidence which crowds into me supports
the charge that this is not a campaign which has proved attractive to
the German rank and file. Prisoners we have taken say that they have no
relish for the fighting. They have been well plied with drink, and seem
to urge that drunkenness may be pleaded as an excuse for crime.

_An officer whose letter from the trenches we published a few days ago
has since written a letter, dated Oct. 8, from which we take extracts:_

Last week I wrote that we had been in the trenches ten days. Now we have
been in them nearly three weeks, and still the fight goes on. We don't
mind it now. We hated it at first. The inaction made us ill. But we
recovered and began to make jokes about it. And now we don't care. We
eat and sleep, and eat again; and we dig, eternally dig, grubbing our
way deeper and deeper into the earth,