the house with coal and provisions,
and offered the ladies game they had shot, only sinned by their
over-gallantry. But things changed for the worse with the coming of a
hundred Death's Head Hussars and Lieutenant von Bernhausen.... Nothing
very outrageous is recorded, but there was dragooning, inquisition,
drunkenness. Bernhausen's reign lasted two months." As to outrages on
women, Madame Yerta writes: "To be sure there were rapes, but, thanks be
to God, these were few, and they took place at the beginning of the
invasion.... I must confess that many a woman was the victim of her own
imprudence." The book is, naturally, fiercely anti-German, its facts
are, however, those of any war story.

Again, "On the whole the Germans behaved well at St. Quentin. Their rule
was stern but just, and although the civil population had been put on
rations of black bread, they got enough, and it was not, after all, so
bad." This testimony is the more noteworthy because, "as one of the most
important bases of the German Army in France the town was continually
filled with troops of every regiment, who stayed a little while and then
passed on." (Philip Gibbs, "The Soul of the War," p. 152.) It is a
little startling to read some more that Mr. Gibbs has to say.
French-women were ready to sell themselves to German soldiers, and "such
outrageous scenes took place that the German order to close some of the
cafes was hailed as a boon by the decent citizens, who saw the women
expelled by order of the German commandant with enormous thankfulness."
I am not so surprised at this now as when I first read it. An English
soldier has since told me that the "silliness" (as he called it) of
women for soldiers leads them, in more cases than he could have
imagined, to bestow themselves on either friend or enemy. Women with
child had said to him quite proudly that it was by a German soldier!

From a private letter: "One of the party is a French officer who tells
the tale. After the Marne retreat he was crossing over the territory
evacuated by the Germans, and made inquiry of the villagers who had
housed the enemy, how they had been treated, what barbarities had been
committed, and so forth. The villagers were surprised. The Germans had
behaved like gentlemen, had paid for what they used, and had treated
them with perfect courtesy. What, no looting? On the contrary, the
German officer had a soldier shot for a very small act of pillage....
'We're soldiers, not