f the woman, and the German woman has taken
to her new position very readily. She plays her wonderful part in
the production of munitions, not as in Britain in a spirit of
equality, but with a sort of admitted inferiority difficult to
describe exactly.

At four years of age the German male child begins to be a soldier.
At six he is accustomed to walk in military formation. This system
has a few advantages, but many disadvantages. A great concourse of
infants can, for example, be marshalled through the streets of a
city without any trouble at all. But that useful discipline is
more than counterbalanced by the killing of individuality. German
children, especially during the war, try to grow up to be little
men and women as quickly as possible. They have shared the long
working hours of the grown-ups, and late in the hot summer nights I
have seen little Bavarian boys and girls who have been at school
from seven and worked in the fields from three o'clock till dark,
drinking their beer in the beer garden with a relish that showed
they needed some stimulant. The beer is not Bass's ale, but it
contains from two to five per cent. of alcohol. Unhealthy-looking
little men are these German boys of from twelve to fifteen during
the war. The overwork, and the lowering of the diet, has given
them pasty faces and dark rings round their eyes. All games and
amusements have been abandoned, and the only relaxation is corps
marching through the streets at night, singing their hate songs and
"Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles."

The girls, in like fashion, often spend their school interval in
marching in columns of four, singing the same horrible chants.

Up to the time of the scarcity of woollen materials, the millions
of little German schoolgirls produced their full output of comforts
for the troops.

The practical result, from a military point of view, of training
children to venerate the All-Highest War Lord and his family,
together with his ancestors, was shown at the beginning of the war,
when there came a great rush of volunteers (_Freiwillige_), many of
them beneath the military age, many of them beyond it. In most of
the calculations of German man-power, some ally and neutral
military writers seem to have forgotten these volunteers, estimated
at two millions.

A significant change in Germany is the cessation of the volunteer
movement. Parents who gladly sent forth their boys as volunteers,
are now endeavourin