or glory, not for conquest, nor for
vengeance. Hatred was not the inspiration of the mass of them, for I
am certain that except in hours when men "see red" there was no direct
hatred of the men in the opposite trenches, but, on the other hand, a
queer sense of fellow--feeling, a humorous sympathy for "old Fritz,"
who was in the same bloody mess as themselves. Our generals, it is true,
hated the Germans. "I should like one week in Cologne," one of them told
me, before there seemed ever a chance of getting there, "and I would let
my men loose in the streets and turn a blind eye to anything they liked
to do."

Some of our officers were inspired by a bitter, unrelenting hate.

"If I had a thousand Germans in a row," one of them said to me, "I would
cut all their throats, and enjoy the job."

But that was not the mentality of the men in the ranks, except those
who were murderers by nature and pleasure. They gave their cigarettes to
prisoners and filled their water-bottles and chatted in a friendly way
with any German who spoke a little English, as I have seen them time
and time again on days of battle, in the fields of battle. There were
exceptions to this treatment, but even the Australians and the Scots,
who were most fierce in battle, giving no quarter sometimes, treated
their prisoners with humanity when they were bundled back. Hatred was
not the motive which made our men endure all things. It was rather, as
I have said, a refusal in their souls to be beaten in manhood by all
the devils of war, by all its terrors, or by its beastliness, and at
the back of all the thought that the old country was "up against it" and
that they were there to avert the evil.

Young soldiers of ours, not only of officer rank, but of "other ranks,"
as they were called, were inspired at the beginning, and some of them to
the end, with a simple, boyish idealism. They saw no other causes of war
than German brutality. The enemy to them was the monster who had to be
destroyed lest the world and its beauty should perish--and that was
true so long as the individual German, who loathed the war, obeyed the
discipline of the herd-leaders and did not revolt against the natural
laws which, when the war had once started, bade him die in defense of
his own Fatherland. Many of those boys of ours made a dedication of
their lives upon the altar of sacrifice, believing that by this service
and this sacrifice they would help the victory of civilization over