Almost every day we saw the site of some skirmish, and near by would be a little group of graves with wooden crosses bearing the names of the fallen. We would thus keep the track of our regiment, and often would find the names of those we knew among the dead. At last we reached the front. In the three weeks march, of three hundred who left Cassel, one hundred had already dropped out through sickness. All the Jews and all the Alsatians, with one exception, had drunk themselves into dysentery. If in a cholera country you go on drinking well water unboiled, you are sure to get dysentery sooner or later. When we arrived at the headquarters of the regiment, we had to undergo three formal receptions. The major commanding the regiment, the captain commanding the battalion, the lieutenant commanding the company, each delivered a speech, but the only thing that did us any good was the quiet little heart-to-heart talk the company sergeant-major had with us that evening before going to bed. Apparently the last set of recruits had proved unsatisfactory. They had even taken to stealing things out of their comrades’ knapsacks. The law in our company was that you might take anything that was not in a knapsack. It was the man’s own fault, if he lost it, for leaving it lying about. On the other hand, to steal out of a knapsack was the unpardonable sin and was severely punished. I do not know anything about the code of morals in other armies, but I do know this, the German working man will pilfer whenever he can, and no feeling of shame or good comradeship will restrain him. And the Socialism with which he becomes indoctrinated in the army makes it appear almost a virtue to steal from the rich. [SN: ON THE MARCH]