flies and fresh air and unimportant dirt as the English or the
Americans. They probably feel that there are more essential things
to consider than flies and their trysting places! In this hospital
we saw our first wounded German prisoners. We saw boys fifteen
years old, whose voices had not changed. We saw men past fifty. We
saw slope-shouldered, hollow-chested, pale-faced men of the academic
type, wearing glasses an eighth of an inch thick. We saw scrubby
looking men who seemed to "be the dirt and the dross, the dust and
the scum of the earth."

And we saw also some well-set-up Germans, and in a bull-pen near
the railroad station waiting for the trains to take them to the
interior of France were six thousand German prisoners--for the most
part well-made men. Here and there was a scrub--a boy, a defective,
or an old man; showing that the Germans are working these classes
through the army; but indicating, so far as one batch of prisoners
from one part of the battle line may indicate, that the Germans
still have a splendid fighting army. But the old German army that
came raging through Belgium and northern France in 1914 is gone.
Germany is well past the peak in man power, as shown in the soldiers
of the line. It is also likely that the morale of the German line
has its best days behind it. The American ambulance men in the Verdun
sector told us of a company of German soldiers who had come across
a few nights before to surrender, after killing their officers.
They appeared at about ten o'clock at night, and told the French
to cease firing at exactly that time the next night for ten minutes
and another troop of Germans would come across. The French ceased
at the agreed hour and thirty more came over and brought the mail
to their comrades! That, of course, is not a usual occurrence. But
similar instances are found. The best one can say of the German