The under-officer told me that he had been wounded twice and been on the Russian front for a very long spell. He had also been on the West front in 1914, and I discovered that he had been in an attack on the very trenches occupied by my brigade near the Chemin des Dames on the Aisne. He had no hesitation in saying which was the nastiest front. He was absolutely fed up with the war, as were the others in the carriage. They asked us when we thought the war would end, and out of principle we said in a year to two years' time. I was often asked the same question while at Crefeld and always answered--"a year or more." This seemed to depress them and they used to blame England for being the cause of the war going on so long. Nearly every day I went to the canteen, and, according to my usual custom, talked to the German soldiers doing duty as salesmen there. The war was always the subject of conversation and I generally asked them, laughingly, when the great promised defeat of England was going to come off. One day, one of them became quite serious and leant across the counter to me and said in a low tone so that only I could hear--"Germany will never defeat England." As an afterthought he added, "but England can never defeat Germany." I laughed and told him to wait. It was extremely interesting to observe the gradual taming of the Boche. In 1914 he was intoxicated with victories actual and prospective; 1915, confident but a little more calm; the big talk of capturing London, etc., had died down by then; 1916, general depression, and towards the end of the year actual and open fear for the future and hate of the war was to be observed among the soldiers and civilians of the lower orders. By the Spring of 1917, real anxiety about the coming summer's fighting began to be evident, which was partially relieved by the events in Russia and the great promises and hopes held out to them by the submarine warfare. Their behaviour towards us followed the same gradual scale. At first, bullying, truculent and brutal, they became more docile as time went on, until when we left Crefeld in May 1917, their behaviour was not so far removed from what one had a right to expect from prison guards and officials towards their officer prisoners. Although the guards in our railway carriage had become quite friendly by now, they did not relax their vigilance, and it was quite evident that they would not sleep all at the same time during the night which was approaching. I watched very carefully that night, but never once did I catch them all unconscious at the same moment. There can be no doubt whatever that they had had very stringent orders on the subject, owing probably to the escape of nine British officers from trains in the last three months. The same watchfulness was displayed by the Germans throughout the train, as we found out on comparing notes afterwards. The journey continued throughout the next day and we passed through Minden in the late afternoon.