y of these fugitives that I made my way back. Away in
the neighbourhood of Hazebrouck the guns were still booming, and
across the fields the outposts of French cavalry were waiting for the
enemy.

4

It was better for women and children to be in Arras under continual
shell-fire than in some of those villages along the valleys of the Marne
and the Meuse and in the Department of the Seine, through which
the Germans passed on their first march across the French frontier.
It was a nicer thing to be killed by a clean piece of shell than to suffer
the foulness of men whose passions had been unleashed by drink
and the devil and the madness of the first experience of war, and by
fear which made them cruel as beasts.

I think fear was at the heart of a good deal of those atrocious Bets by
which the German troops stained the honour of their race in the first
phases of the war. Advancing into a hostile country, among a people
whom they knew to be reckless in courage and of a proud spirit, the
generals and high officers were obsessed with the thought of peasant
warfare, rifle-shots from windows, murders of soldiers billeted in
farms, spies everywhere, and the peril of franc-tireurs, goading their
troops on the march. Their text-books had told them that all this was
to be expected from the French people and could only be stamped
out by ruthlessness. The proclamations posted on the walls of
invaded towns reveal fear as well as cruelty. The mayor and
prominent citizens were to surrender themselves as hostages. If any
German soldier were killed, terrible reprisals would be exacted. If
there were any attempt on the part of the citizens to convey
information to the French troops, or to disobey the regulations of the
German commander, their houses would be burned and their
property seized, and their lives would pay the forfeit. These bald-
headed officers in pointed helmets, so scowling behind their
spectacles, had fear in their hearts and concealed it by cruelty.

When such official proclamations were posted up on the walls of
French villages, it is no wonder that the subordinate officers and their
men were nervous of the dangers suggested in those documents,
and found perhaps without any conscious dishonesty clear proof of
civilian plots against them. A shot rang out down a village street. "The
peasants are firing on us!" shouted a German soldier of neurotic
temperament. "Shoot them at sight!" said an officer who had learnt
hi