its pale light
upon all those prostrate men, making their faces look very white. He
heard the murmurs of their voices about him, and the groans of the
dying, rising to hideous anguish as men were tortured by ghastly wounds
and broken limbs. In that night enmity was forgotten by those who had
fought like beasts and now lay together. A French soldier gave his
water-bottle to a German officer who was crying out with thirst. The
German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of the man who had been
his enemy. 'There will be no war on the other side,' he said. Another
Frenchman--who came from Montmartre--found lying within a yard of him a
Luxembourgeois whom he had known as his _chasseur_ in a big hotel in
Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. 'It is
stupid,' he said, 'this war. You and I were happy when we were good
friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight with each
other?' He died with his arms round the neck of the soldier, who told
me the story unashamed of his own tears." (Gibbs, l.c. p. 282) "At one
spot where there had been a fierce hand-to-hand fight, there were
indications that the combatants when wounded had shared their water
bottles." (_Sheffield Telegraph_, November 14, 1914.)

The following letter must not be forgotten. It was found at the side of
a dead French cavalry officer: "There are two other men lying near me,
and I do not think there is much hope for them either. One is an officer
of a Scottish regiment, and the other is a private in the Uhlans. They
were struck down after me, and when I came to myself, I found them
bending over me, rendering first aid. The Britisher was pouring water
down my throat from his flask, while the German was endeavouring to
staunch my wound with an anti-septic preparation served out to them by
their medical corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and
the German had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side. In spite
of their own suffering they were trying to help me, and when I was fully
conscious again, the German gave us a morphia injection and took one
himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the injection and
the needle, together with printed instructions for its use. After the
injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives we had
lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the women
we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had only been
married a year. I wonde