without ever complaining. Though originally a big robust man, his sufferings reduced him to a mere skeleton; in the end, however, his brave spirit gained the victory, and he recovered.

And yet this man of iron constitution had within him an almost feminine sensibility and tenderness; he could never speak of his country or his family without tears, nor see one of us go away without similar emotion. On Christmas Eve he said to me, "What day of the month is it?" "The 24th." "How many there are who will not spend Christmas at home," he replied, the great tears running down his cheeks. One of our surgeons witnessed another striking instance of the same power of resignation.

On the evening of the battle of Coulmiers he said to a young wounded officer whom he found lying in one of the rooms, "Where are you wounded?" "It's useless to ask; my wound is mortal; it is here," he added, pointing to his stomach. The surgeon examined and dressed it, trying at the same time to reassure him, though his condition was quite hopeless. A priest who was present asked the young man if he were a Roman Catholic? "No." Our surgeon then found a Protestant chaplain, and brought him to his side. "I told you I was not a Roman Catholic," said the young officer, "but I am not a Protestant either; I have lived till now without religion, and so I shall die;" and he turned to the wall without betraying in a single muscle of his face the horrible moral and physical sufferings he must have been enduring. He said, if I remember right, that he was the son of a Bavarian ambassador in Paris.

When we told any of our wounded Germans that an operation was necessary, they submitted without a murmur, and with deliberate resignation. One of them, on hearing that his leg was to be amputated from the thigh, asked, "Is it necessary?" "Yes." "Then give me a day to get up my courage and resolution." When we went our evening rounds, he said, "Now I am ready,

but put me to sleep on my bed, that I may suffer less."

Thus far I have spoken chiefly of the common soldiers; and the fact is, that there exists nowhere such a widelymarked difference between soldier and officer as in Germany. I look upon the intermediate class of non-commissioned officers as the honour and glory of the German army. They belong generally to the middle ranks of the people, or the smaller citizen class, and rise by steady work and merit; they possess in an eminent degree the good qualities of the soldier, with a more cultivated understanding, and are without that arrogance and hardness which so often characterize the superior officer.

About the German officers the most opposite judgments have been, and may with reason be formed. Some of them are patterns of politeness, of bon ton, and even of humanity, and many possess those essentially German qualities we have been alluding to as existing among the common soldiers; but, on the other hand, there were numbers who degraded themselves by acts of brutality unworthy of educated men. I refer not only to the violent treatment often inflicted on their soldiers, who submitted to it with servile docility, but I have seen women struck and children ill-used by these men, who did not think it beneath their dignity to heap the coarsest abuse on any one who failed to show them what they considered the proper degree of respect. They were rarely wanting in that conventional politeness which consists in saluting people with three consecutive bows, clicking the heels together, and making a right angle of the body; but in that true delicacy of feeling which should have kept them from joking at the expense of their victims, and from giving vent in their presence to feelings of brutal animosity, unworthy of any noble mind, they were too often sadly deficient. Their doctors, for instance, would come into our hospitals and say, "Vous plus maître ici, moi maître." One of our surgeons was an Alsatian, and any officer who discovered it was pretty sure

to taunt him with some such remark as "Ha, ein neuer Preuss!" But this was not all. Such vulgar vices as drunkenness and theft were not wanting among the officers, even among those who seemed well educated, refined, and like gentlemen. They not only stole wholesale, as they did round Paris, where they appeared to regard every deserted house as their lawful property, but were not ashamed to commit the most mean and petty thefts, even to pocketing the silver fork and spoon they had just been using, or any trinket they might have found in the room where they slept. At Talcy, an old castle, the property of a friend of ours, the Duke of Mecklenburg's staff-officers, men of the highest rank, and bearing the titles of count and baron, stole an ivory paper-knife, a case of mathematical instruments, and five francs out of a box in the drawing-room, to which they alone were admitted. Others who came after them pocketed a series of small German almanacks. The inspector of a German ambulance, a true patriot, to whose testimony I attach great importance, once said to me, "The thefts committed by our officers are a blot upon our national honour, and it makes me blush to think of all that I have heard and seen."

It would be unjust, however, to make all the officers responsible for these offences, though esprit de corps and a regard for honour ought to make such things impossible among them; but this was not the case, for I often heard the best of them seeking to excuse acts which, in their consciences, they could not but blame. Yet on the whole, except when the severity of the system of invasion rendered the commission of acts of brutality a duty, the conduct of the officers was that of well-educated and benevolent men. Towards our ambulance we always found them not merely polite, but remarkably considerate and kind-Prince Frederick Charles's staff, I am sorry to say, excepted; for they made it their duty to be as insolent as their chief, and at Doncourt, near Metz, treated us with a rudeness which was

really ludicrous. At Ouzouer, on the contrary, the staff of the 9th Corps behaved towards us with the greatest consideration; allowing us every facility in their power for obtaining supplies for the ambulance, and going themselves to the café and dining at the little tables there, rather than turn us out of the large dining-room in the hotel where we had been in the habit of

taking our meals. We saw some amusing proofs of the respect entertained in the Prussian army for ambulances in general. One day a man came and told our surgeon that four Uhlans were busy ransacking our diningroom. He ran there, and, finding four great fellows poking about into every corner of the room, called out "This room belongs to the ambulance; you have no business here." They looked at each other for a moment, and then one of them said, "He's right, we have no business here." The surgeon left them, and they went into the kitchen, and, pulling out four bottles of wine and two of brandy from under their cloaks, they put them down, saying "Those belong to the ambulance, and the doctor said we were not to take them." At Oucques an ambulance-flag had been left flying over an empty house. A serjeantmajor, a Mecklenburger, wanted to quarter some officers in it, and was marking the door with chalk, when a Prussian came up and collared him, calling out "It's all very well for you Mecklenburgers not to respect the convention; can't you see that flag? We Prussians know what the convention is, and, what's more, we'll have it respected!"

We stood on a very pleasant footing with the German ambulances, and found among their members many learned and high-minded men, devoted to their profession and their patients, and always willing to be of service to

us.

The German ambulances and their admirable organization would furnish matter for a special article, if the subject were to be treated as it deserves.

But I once saw an act committed by one of them which was not in accordance

with their usual behaviour. It was at Raucourt, in the Ardennes, where the 6th Bavarian ambulance, attached to the 3rd regiment of infantry, had been temporarily occupying quarters previously fitted up by us. On leaving they carried off every blanket in the place, even those which actually covered the wounded, whom they left behind in a dying condition, to the number of sixteen. But, on the other hand, I visited I cannot say how many ambulances, in which the greatest care and attention were bestowed on the wounded of both nations, often under the direction of celebrated and devoted medical men, such as Drs. Loeffler, Volkmann of Halle, Müller, Langenbeck, and Boehm, with such inspectors as the Knights of St. John, the Count of Alversleben, the Prince of Taxis, and the Prince of Wyd. Truly, it is to the ambulances we must turn for some consolation amid all the sad scenes of this war.

Admitting the remarkable intellectual and moral culture of nearly all the German officers, and even the highminded integrity of many of them, it is still the fact that they, together with the great political leaders, and learned members of the universities, are responsible for much with which we have to reproach the German nation in the war.

The politicians and professors aroused the national hatred against France by advocating the war as a retaliation for Jena, and instilling into the minds of the German people the idea that they were ordained to diffuse German civilization and German morality throughout the world. And the officers in the higher ranks of the army devised and carried out the barbarous system by which France has been crushed. These two enlightened classes upheld the justice of the war and the right of conquest, first on the plea of securing the safety of Germany, and next on the ground of historical principles and theories of nationality. I met with many private soldiers who thought it decidedly wrong to sacrifice men's lives, in forcing others, against their will, into a foreign subjection; but I never met any officers who were

not resolved to fight to the death for the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine. "You would have taken the Rhine had you been the conquerors," said these worshippers of brute force: "we are the conquerors, and we take Alsace." Or if they did not use such cynical arguments as these, after exhausting all the arguments they could adduce from history, they would conclude by saying, "We have at our head a man of such genius that we can only say 'whatever he wills must be.'" (Wenn er es will,

so muss es sein.) Yes, this nation of idealists has become the slave of "le fait accompli," and worships might as its idol.

In no class does this evil tendency show itself more strikingly than among the religious men, and especially the army chaplains, the "Feld-prediger."

The officers-students of the universities-imbued with the materialism and fatalism of the modern historical school, would say to us with a smile, "Right and justice! What is right? What is justice? Force and facts are the only principles to go upon." The chaplains said, "God is the judge. He is on the side of the victor, and the vanquished must submit to His will, or be guilty of rebellion against God." Nothing enraged me so much as this appeal to "Gottesgericht"-God's judgment pronounced against Abel in favour of Cain.

Lutherans and Hegelians, Pietists and Positivists alike worshipped might, and despised the conscience, the liberty, and the rights of the individual. Why should the sympathies and wishes of the Alsatians be considered? They were but the result of circumstances, necessary but transitory phenomena, which would change with the change of circumstances which caused them. The chaplains excited the troops against the French by comparing the war they were engaged in with the wars waged by God's people against the Philistines and Amalekites of old. But while dwelling thus exclusively on the wars of the Old Testament, they forgot the gentler teaching of the New. They did

not remember that if they desired to resemble the prophets of the Old Covenant they must be, not the flatterers, but the counsellors and accusers of unrighteous kings and princes.

It was these Pietist Lutherans who, while applauding and excusing every act of their countrymen, propagated the most exaggerated and violent accusations against the French nation, and set an example of hypocrisy worthy of the Jesuits themselves. This animus was constantly manifesting itself. An Alsatian, who was an intimate friend of Mr. Bethmann Hollweg, one of the heads of the Evangelical party in Germany, wrote to him one day, blaming the behaviour of the Prussians at Strasburg. Instead of answering his friend's letter, Mr. Bethmann sent it straight to Bismarck-Bohlen, the Prussian Governor of Alsace, and the result was a communication informing the too-trusting Alsatian that he would thenceforward be closely watched, and warning him to be on his guard. A chaplain visited our ambulance one day, and, thinking that we did not understand German, asked his wounded countrymen, in our presence, if we treated them well. When they praised our care and devotion, he merely remarked, "All right, my friends; but recollect your gratitude is due not to men, but to God alone." Such were the acts and insinuations of the Prussian Lutheran clergy.

of Germany, religion, science, and intellectual culture are often degraded into the service of false theories, or used as specious pretexts for injustice. There is a narrow jealousy about the patriotism of such men-they lose sight of the ideal, suffer their sense of justice to be obscured, and become hard, matter-offact, and greedy of gain. Results such as these are the poisoned fruits of victory and the pride of success in Germany, and they throw a shade on the noble qualities of the people, and a black veil over the laurels they have won in this glorious campaign.

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I must leave others to praise the wonderful organization of the German army, the heroism and science of its commanders, the steadfastness and perfect discipline of its soldiers, its faultless strategy, and the superiority of its cavalry and artillery of such matters I am not a competent judge. I believe also that the prestige of victory is of itself sufficient to prevent an ignorant observer from discovering defects in an army, which has hitherto undoubtedly proved itself to be the finest the world has ever seen.

Hitherto I have applied myself exclusively to forming a right estimation of the worth and character of the Germans with whom I have come into contact during the war. I hope in the next number of the magazine to conclude this paper with my judgment on my own