substance which brought illness and death to
many. Indeed, the mortality from this cause was so heavy at one period
that all the grave diggers in the town could not keep pace with it.

[Sidenote: Germans eager to buy food.]

One could easily understand how great must have been the temptation to
the Germans to tap for themselves the food which friends abroad had sent
for their victims. It is a significant fact that soldiers in Roubaix
were eager to buy rice from those who had obtained it at the depot at
four francs (3s 4d) the pound in order, as they said, "to send it home."
I shall describe later how utterly different were the conditions in
Belgium as I saw them.

Meagre as were the food supplies for the civilians in Roubaix, those
issued to the German soldiers toward the end of my stay were little
better.

At first the householders, on whom the soldiers were billeted, were
required to feed them and to recover the cost from the municipal
authorities.

[Sidenote: Change of demeanor of soldiery.]

Of all the things I saw and heard in Roubaix and Lille none impressed me
more than the wonderful change which came over the outlook and demeanor
of the German soldiery between October, 1914, and October, 1915.

I had many opportunities of mingling with them, more, in fact, than I
cared to have, for now and again during this period two or three of them
were actually billeted on the good folk with whom I lodged.

[Sidenote: Already tired of war.]

I knew just sufficient of the German language to be able to chat with
them, and they made no attempt to conceal from me their real feelings. I
am merely repeating the statement made to me over and over again by many
German soldiers when I say that the men in the ranks are thoroughly
tired of the war, that they have abandoned all thought of conquest, and
that they fight on only because they believe that their homes and
families are at stake.

On that Autumn morning when the first German troops came into Roubaix
they came flushed with victory, full of confidence in their strength,
marching with their eyes fixed on Paris and London. They sang aloud as
they swung through our streets. They sing no more. Instead, as I saw
with my own eyes, many of them show in their faces the abject misery
which is in their hearts.

[Sidenote: Expect end of war in November, 1916.]

Last year scores of them told me, quite independently, that the war
would come to an end on November 17, 1916. How