MORAL WASTAGE.

_Under the caption "Moral Wastage of the German Army," the review
continues:_

The material losses of the German Army have corresponded with a moral
wastage which it is interesting and possible to follow, both from the
interrogation of prisoners and the pocketbooks and letters seized upon
them or on the killed.

At the beginning of the war the entire German Army, as was natural, was
animated by an unshakable faith in the military superiority of the
empire. It lived on the recollections of 1870, and on those of the long
years of peace, during which all the powers which had to do with Germany
displayed toward her a spirit of conciliation and patience which might
pass for weakness.

The first prisoners we took in August showed themselves wholly
indifferent to the reverses of the German Army. They were sincerely and
profoundly convinced that, if the German Army retired, it was in virtue
of a preconceived plan, and that our successes would lead to nothing.
The events at the end of August were calculated to strengthen this
contention in the minds of the German soldiers.

The strategic retreat of the French Army, the facility with which the
German armies were able to advance from Aug. 25 to Sept. 5, gave our
adversaries a feeling of absolute and final superiority, which
manifested itself at that time by all the statements gleaned and all the
documents seized.