The Turks seem to have forsaken their first horrible and devilish
cruelties towards English prisoners. They have been taught a lesson by
the Australians, who took some prisoners up to the top of a ridge and
rolled them down into the Turks' trenches like balls, firing on them as
they rolled. Horrible! but after that Turkish cruelties ceased.

Our own men see red since the Canadians were crucified, and I fancy no
prisoners were taken for a long time after. We "censor" this or that in
the newspapers, but nothing will censor men's tongues, and there is a
terrible and awful tale of suffering and death and savagery going on
now. Like a ghastly dream we hear of trenches taken, and the cries of
men go up, "Mercy, comrade, mercy!" Sometimes they plead, poor caught
and trapped and pitiful human beings, that they have wives and children
who love them. The slaughter goes on, the bayonet rends open the poor
body that someone loved, then comes the internal gush of blood, and
another carcase is flung into the burying trench, with some lime on the
top of it to prevent a smell of rotting flesh.

My God, what does it all mean? Are men so mad? And why are they killing
all our best and bravest? Our first army is gone, and surely such a
company never before took the field! Outmatched by twenty to one, they
stuck it at Mons and on the Aisne, and saved Paris by a miracle. All my
old friends fell then--men near my own age, whom I have known in many
climes--Eustace Crawley, Victor Brooke, the Goughs, and other splendid
men. Now the sons of my friends are falling fast--Duncan Sim's boy,
young Wilson, Neville Strutt, and scores of others. I know one case in
which four brothers have fallen; another, where twins of nineteen died
side by side; and this one has his eyes blown out, and that one has his
leg torn off, and another goes mad; and boys, creeping back to the base
holding an arm on, or bewildered by a bullet through the brain, wander
out of their way till a piece of shrapnel or torn edge of shell finds
them, and they fall again, with their poor boyish faces buried in the
mud!

Mr. ---- dined with us last night. He had been talking of his brother
who was killed, and he said: "I think it makes a difference if you
belong to a family which has always given its lives to the country. We
are accustomed to make these sacrifices."

Thus bravely in the light of day, but when evening came and we sat
together, then we knew just what the life of the