"They come closer and still you are horrorstruck. Then you feel your horse fretting and suddenly you start from your daze, and fear changes suddenly to hate. Your hand goes to the saber hilt, your teeth clinch and you realize that you must strike hard before the enemy, who is now very close, can strike. Every muscle tightens with the waiting. "Before your own bugles have sounded two notes of the charge you find yourself leaning forward over the neck of your galloping horse. All the rest is a mad gallop, yells of the enemy and your own answer, a terrible shock in which you are almost dismounted, and then you find yourself face to face with a single opponent who, standing up in the stirrups, is about to split your head. You notice that you are striking like a fiend with the saber. "After that madness passes it seems almost like a complex maneuver and soon you find yourself riding for dear life--perhaps to escape, perhaps after the Germans. You then realize that you have been whipped and that the charge has failed, or you see the backs of the fleeing enemy, feel your horse straining in pursuit and know that you have gained a victory." FRIGHTFUL MORTALITY AMONG OFFICERS The official reports of the loss of life in the battles in France tell of the large number of officers killed. Sharp-shooters on both sides have had instructions to aim at officers. These sharpshooters are often concealed far in advance of their troops. Their small number and their smokeless powder make their discovery most difficult. This lesson was learned at great cost to the British during the Boer war. Dispatches from Bordeaux stated that letters found on dead and captured German officers prove the truth of reports regarding the terrible mortality in the German ranks, especially among officers. In the Tenth and Imperial Guard Corps of the German army it is said that only a few high ranking officers escaped being shot, and many have been killed. The German officers have distinguished themselves by their courage, according to the stories of both British and French who fought them. An officer of an Imperial Guard regiment, who was taken prisoner after being wounded, said: "My regiment left for the front with sixty officers; it counts today only five. "We underwent terrible trials." A German artillery officer wrote: "Modern war is the greatest of follies. Companies of 250 men in the Tenth Army Corps have been reduced to seventy men, and there are companies of the guard commanded by volunteers of a year, all the officers having disappeared." SAYS GEBMANS FOUGHT EVERY DAY The following is from a letter, written during the prolonged battle of the Aisne by a lieutenant of the Twenty-sixth German Artillery: