The fact that the author survived those trying days on the field of battle; that in the course of his removal he had the benefit of comparatively humane treatment; that he was kindly tended in a good hospital, must not lead any one to the conclusion that in no case was a wounded man finished off or tortured; or that he never was subjected to grievous privations and brutality during his time in hospital. The barbarities of the Germans are too well known to call for any further confirmation. Beside the kindnesses occasionally experienced at the hands of Teuton soldiers, must be set innumerable assassinations perpetrated by these savages at the instigation of their officers. The devotion of some hospital nurses must be set against the crimes of violence on French prisoners, as they passed through a railway station, after the battle of the Marne, of which certain German “ladies,” who professed to be members of the Red Cross, were guilty; while certain majors displayed a kindly solicitude, on the other hand, to the deep disgrace of the German people, is the experience of unmitigated and inexcusable brutality. The aim of the writer has been to set forth some samples of the life of a prisoner, and, above all, to show the French prisoner in his struggle against the two predominant evils, common to all his fellows, hunger and depression--with a weapon which is characteristically French and is the only one of which his jailer is powerless to deprive him--namely, chaff (_raillerie_). Harassed by hunger, tortured by the cold, weakened by privation, depressed by misery, overwhelmed by sorrow, persecuted by the relentless hatred of his executioner, the French prisoner always kept his heart up. In spite of all these forms of oppression he is the victor. Under torture he laughs at his executioner: a prisoner, his spirit gives him the mastery over his jailer. His pluck is a thorn in the flesh of the man who strikes him. His laughter sounds like a knell in the ears of the Boche, who cannot understand it, and whose chief characteristic is, as the English say--a complete lack of humour. With all the energy of their stolidity, those fossilised brutes, the Germans, are carrying on a struggle with this volatile, mocking, mischievous, caustic spirit which they cannot understand. All their attempts to get rid of it are fruitless. The battle of the Marne enabled us to retain unimpaired our old Gallic spirit, and the prisoners cling to it jealously.