ent quoted by Mr.
Jerome K. Jerome.

The following letter is from the _Vossische Zeitung_. A soldier's young
sister had written asking him to "kill a lot of Russians" and "to gain a
new victory in order to cheer us up." "'Kill a lot of Russians.' You
have not seen them lying about--those poor dead, with their singularly
solemn faces.... You have not seen the battle which preceded, and the
bad wounds which so many of my friends got in trying to kill a lot of
them. You do not think of the fact that those dead men had parents,
brothers, and sisters whom they loved. And you have not seen the
harrowing destruction of the villages and towns--how the poor,
hunted-down population is running away, leaving everything they had
behind them to be consumed by the flames.... And then, remember, we are
not fighting in order to cheer you up--we are not lying about in the
open-air day and night, starved and suffering from wounds and
homesickness, in order that you at home may be cheerful at the tea or
beer table. We are fighting and bearing this terrible wretchedness in
order that you may he spared the horrors of war, and that Germany's
future may be bright." That is, I believe, what the enormous majority of
Germany's soldiers are fighting for. Soldiers on both sides have similar
and quite reconcilable aims; but government is too complex to express
the simple will of the people. In every country, it seems to me,
anti-militarist opinion only needs its chance. I was struck by the
frequency with which such an opinion cropped up when I was travelling a
few weeks in Germany not long before the war. On the top of the Belchen
I encountered it in talking to a native of Wuertemberg. Again in a walk
with a young German to the Feldberg; again in a book-shop at Freiburg;
again in chance railway talk with a very well-educated German on my way
to Berlin. In Berlin itself a giant Westphalian accosted me, as he
wanted to make the acquaintance of "one of these terrible fellows who
mean to smash up Germany." His political ideal consisted in the belief
that England and Germany, understanding each other, could keep the peace
of the world.

ALBERT KLEIN.

Dr. Albert Klein, of Giessen, who was killed in the Champagne in
February, felt compelled to side with his Government, as so many do in
times of crisis. To that extent his was a biased judgment. It is a bias
that one has seen possessing almost everywhere the noblest souls. But
Klein could write thus: