es over heaps of corpses, breathed in the smell of human
corruption and had always in their ears the cries of the wounded they
could not rescue. They wrote these things in tragic letters--thousands
of them--which never reached their homes in Germany, but lay in their
captured ditches.

"The number of dead lying about is awful. One stumbles over them."

"The stench of the dead lying round us is unbearable."

"We are no longer men here. We are worse than beasts."

"It is hell let loose."... "It is horrible."... "We've lived in misery."

"If the dear ones at home could see all this perhaps there would be a
change. But they are never told."

"The ceaseless roar of the guns is driving us mad."

Poor, pitiful letters, out of their cries of agony one gets to the real
truth of war-the "glory" and the "splendor" of it preached by the
German philosophers and British Jingoes, who upheld it as the great
strengthening tonic for their race, and as the noblest experience of
men. Every line these German soldiers wrote might have been written by
one of ours; from both sides of the shifting lines there was the same
death and the same hell.

Behind the lines the German General Staff, counting up the losses of
battalions and divisions who staggered out weakly, performed juggling
tricks with what reserves it could lay its hands on, and flung up
stray units to relieve the poor wretches in the trenches. Many of those
reliefs lost their way in going up, and came up late, already shattered
by the shell-fire through which they passed.

"Our position," wrote a German infantry officer, "was, of course, quite
different from what we had been told. Our company alone relieved a whole
battalion. We had been told we were to relieve a company of fifty men
weakened by casualties.

"The men we relieved had no idea where the enemy was, how far off he
was, or whether any of our own troops were in front of us. We got no
idea of our support position until six o'clock this evening. The English
are four hundred yards away, by the windmill over the hill."

One German soldier wrote that the British "seem to relieve their
infantry very quickly, while the German commands work on the principle
of relieving only in the direst need, and leaving the divisions in as
long as possible."

Another wrote that:

"The leadership of the divisions really fell through. For the most part
we did not get orders, and the regiment had to manage as best it could.
If orde