Much has been written about the severe discipline of the German Army, but I noticed very little of it. The feeling which ruled among the officers was, here are people who are about to face death and unheard-of privations for the Fatherland, we must treat them well while they are still at home. Punishments were rarely given, except for gross disobedience. All sorts of things were winked at, which in times of peace would have brought us days of arrest. We had one fiery little lieutenant, who was continually losing his temper and inflicting on us extra drill, but we always ignored him, and so did the corporals, whose business it would have been to stay behind and superintend the drill. Some of the sergeants were abominably lazy. They would march us into the forest, select a likely place, tell us to lie down, and then wander about picking wild raspberries, first placing a sentry to see what the captain was doing. Suddenly a hoarse stage-whisper would be heard, “Herr Feldwebel, der Herr Hauptmann kommt!” (Sergeant, the Captain is coming), and the Feldwebel would roar in his best “command-voice,” “Sprung, auf, marsch, marsch,” and we would disappear into the depths of the forest. Once when we were idling like this by the side of a grassy lane, the General Commanding the Corps rode by. The silence became electric, we expected a great storm, and our expectations were heightened when he suddenly stopped his horse and ordered one of the men to rise and come to him. But the Great Man only pointed out that a strap was wrongly buckled, and then rode on. Mr. Wells has made much in “Mr. Britling” of the stupid mistakes committed by the officers training English troops. Ours were no better. Nearly all our sham fights went wrong. One night we had orders to attack a certain party, but not finding them, marched away home. The “enemy,” meanwhile, had received no orders of any sort, so they remained on the “field of battle” for hours. Finally they took their courage in both their hands and marched home too. Such mistakes were always being committed. I do not say that our officers were especially stupid. It is only that blunders are inseparable from any form of human activity. Those made by English officers, which so much excite Mr. Wells, could be paralleled in any European country during the war. In one thing the English War Office did _not_ blunder--that is, when they refused the offer of Mr. Wells’s services as a soldier, until they had got the younger men trained.