British sailor; but to-day, in the very heart of France and Belgium I have seen with my own eyes acts and deeds accomplished by British soldiers, artillery, infantry, and cavalry, that, I tell you from the depths of my heart, have no parallel in British history. I have seen the 9th Lancers at Mons charge through the German ranks, turn and come back, and repeat the charge eight successive times. I have seen three gunners at the last battery silence every gun in the German battery; and then, as if to complete the triumph, the Lancers charged and cut down every gunner that remained at the German guns. Well may the Kaiser say it is a contemptible little army. but good things are wrapped up in small parcels. Some men will suggest poison, but it is just as effective as other things. Going from Mons I followed the retreat of the British army. The British soldier has ever been known for his offensive tactics; never before had his mettle been tried in defensive and retiring tactics, except perhaps in South Africa. Search where you may in the military history of any land, and you will never find a chapter so glittering with gallantry and pluck and success as the chapter that represents the retreat of the army from Mons to the gates of Paris. Three times General French's army was completely surrounded by the Germans, and threatened with annihilation; but three times they carved their way out and left German dead on the field three times as great as the British dead. I saw one instance where the French had failed to come up. The British army was in a critical position; General French addressed a few words to his men; he explained that it meant their lives, but he wanted a thousand men to hold the trenches and let the British army retreat. What regiment do you suppose accepted that duty? The Black Watch. The Captain of the Black Watch told General French that there was only one regiment in the British army whose duty it was to accept that responsibility, and that was the Black Watch. They went into those trenches a thousand strong; they came out thirty-three men alive; and those thirtythree men were rescued by no less a regiment than the good old Irish Fusiliers. Right from Mons to the forts of Paris it was a matter of fighting by day and retreating by night;

so it was that everywhere I went I met stragglers from the British army, men who had been left during the dark hours of the night. Some of them were in rags, some with bleeding feet, some without food for days, but despite their hunger and thirst and want, they had only one purpose, and that was to get back to the army and get another strike at the Germans. And some of them did get back, and some who did return have succeeded in placing under the sod Germans outnumbering themselves many times over.

It is not necessary to go into details to know and understand the character of the British retreat from Mons. It was absolutely necessary, because Kitchener-and that is a name that Germany has learned to respect, despite the fact that she seeks to heap scorn on his headKitchener-is the stumbling block for Von Kluk and some of the German generals-Kitchener's policy was to use up the German machine with the least possible expenditure of men and ammunition and money. Has he succeeded? Look at Europe to-day; the flower of the German army is under the sod; and there is not enough force in Germany if they take every man and boy from fifteen to eighty, big enough to beat the British army alone, to say nothing of the French or the Russians or the Belgians. I was in Paris when Kitchener made a hurried visit to that city; that was the time when the French had failed to come up to relieve the British. He laid down to the French government one cast-iron law, and he told them if they did not live up to that law, he would withdraw every soldier from France. What is the result to-day? There is not a move that the French army makes, but Lord Kitchener is consulted. There is hardly a space in the French line but you will find a few British there to cheer up the hearts of the Frenchmen. So it is that although the heroic Belgians held the Germans back sufficiently long at Liege to allow France time to mobilise and prepare, the resistance and tactics of that contemptible little army has saved France over and over again. It will save the Allies; it will save Belgium, and save the whole civilised world, because if Germany should ever succeed, God help humanity. Militarism in Germany to-day is naught but

a tyrannical force; its oppression is telling on the German people. When the war is over, when Prussian militarism will have been crushed for all time to come, I believe some of the gladdest hearts in the world will be found in the peasantry of the German Empire. Of the German soldiers with whom I have conversed, there is not one in ten that wants the war. The war has been forced upon them, and these poor unfortunate individuals are forced into the war, and if they do not march in step, and continue their tactics to please the officers, they have the point of a swordthrust, and sometimes a revolver-shot, from the German officers to silence them. The German officers imitate the British officers in only one respect, and that is that they want to force this fight. But, thank God, there is one distinction between the British and the German officer. The British officer is found at the head of his regiment with uplifted sword; the German officer is found behind his regiment with pistol lifted to shoot the first deserter.

What is the situation in Germany to-day? It has been my pleasure to visit Germany twice. Never in my life have I seen such a spirit of boastful certainty as I found in the German people on my first visit. There was absolutely nothing that that German war machine could not accomplish; it was invincible. London was to be laid in ruins; Paris was to become a German possession; Belgium was to be another German province. As I pause and view the magnificence of that life-dream of the Kaiser, it is almost startling in its effect. What is the difference to-day? That spirit of boastful certainty has given place to a spirit of doubt; that doubt is gradually growing into a fear, and men who six months ago boasted of the success of German arms, are in that state of mind where they will tell you that Germany may not succeed, but they will fight to the last man and the Allies will never see Berlin. We are prepared to grant that the Germans may never succeed in France or Belgium or Britain, but as to the matter of entering Berlin, let us leave that to the Allies, and not accept the dictates of the Kaiser or the war-lords. We will be in Berlin before six months' time. When I say we I speak of the Allies, because Russia will be in Berlin and the Cossacks will be riding up the Unter den Linden long

66

before the Kaiser anticipates. Some say the Russians are not a force to consider seriously. In point of strategy alone the Russians have outpointed the Germans. They have three men to every German, and if they were defeated the other day, that is only part of the general plan, due also to the fact that her railway system is not what it should be. But Russia will have her troops there about the same time as the Allies from the west. An army from France and Belgium and England is going to be rushed across Holland, to join forces from Italy and Roumania. The first duty of that army is to crush Krupp's to the ground, and then complete the encircling movement. The Kaiser will see in September the Cossacks riding down Unter den Linden, and then he will realise that his scheme has failed; but not before. He is an unusual man; he has such unbounded confidence that "Me and God are going to accomplish this and that. After my study of conditions in Germany and France and Belgium, and particularly in Belgium, I say that if the Kaiser is really sincere then he is absolutely insane; and if he is not insane, then I say he is a criminal. It is impossible to say what character of punishment should be meted out to that man. Some say he should be sent to St. Helena; others say he should be dragged at the end of a long rope through Paris. A Belgian lady said, "Let the Kaiser pass down Rue Royale in Brussels, and let every Belgian lady be there with a hatpin one foot long, and let us all take a jab at him, and we will be perfectly satisfied."

I want to say one thing about the conditions in Belgium. Much has been written about the alleged barbarities of the German troops, perpetrated in the heart of Belgium. What has been written does not represent one half the truth. I have seen the mutilation of women and children; I have seen the non-combatant population driven from their homes and massacred; it has only been a policy of fire, pillage, and murder. The Germans claim that they promoted that policy with a purpose of affrighting the French people, so that when the German armies entered France the French would be prepared to throw down their gauntlet. But little Belgium has withstood the test of steel, and the test of fire, and the test of pillage, and along the banks

of the Yser Canal there is a remnant of an army, 55,000 strong, but it is big enough to hold back the hosts, because they can never cross the canal. For months they have attempted to do it in battering their way to Calais. But the little British army held them at Mons, and has held them at Yser for five months, with the whole flower of the German army thrown against that wall of British steel. Had they yielded, Calais would have been in the hands of the Germans in seven days, but even with the Prussian Guards the Kaiser was not able to break down the wall. That wall is there to-day, and the only changeable feature is that it is moving farther and farther north, but not towards Calais.

Barbarities in Belgium, and in northern France, will form one of the blackest pages in the history that will be written in connection with the present war. The first invasion of the German troops represented what we call the professional soldier, bent on the lust of killing and of drink. Drink is responsible in large sense for many of the cruelties in Belgium. But Louvain and Alost and Tirlemont and Malines and Dinant have been sacked by the German troops; women and children have been mutilated and massacred; civilians have been passed to the mitrailleuse, for no other reason than that they were Belgians. The Germans may crush the life out of the Belgian people, but they can never crush the heart out of them. There is only one thing I ask; and that is, that when the Allies go into Germany, do honour to that little state by placing in the front rank the remnant of their army, to prove to the Kaiser and to Berlin that they can survive, and to congratulate the Kaiser on his downfall.

Another point is this: Germany was bent upon the violation of Belgian neutrality months and years before that neutrality was ever violated. In the hotel in Ostend I was talking to the patron when two German guests, who had visited him every summer for the past ten years, were in the act of leaving. He bade them adieu and asked them if they would be back next year again. They said they would be back in fifteen days. They were back in a few months' time, and came with the force that tore down the name Ostend on the station and from the public build

47685A