One great proof of victory is the relief of some of those deadly places in the salient under direct observation from Messines Ridge--screens of foliage which I passed to-day are no longer needed, and one may walk openly in places where German eyes had been watching for men to kill for two years and a half. And another proof, written in human figures, is one huge mass after another of German prisoners, a thousand or more in each assembling place in the fields along the roadsides. They were lying and standing to-day in the sunshine, with coloured handkerchiefs tied above their heads, many of them stripped to the waist to air their shirts, some still wearing their heavy shrapnel helmets with sackcloth covering, all drowsed with fatigue and the prolonged strain of our shell-fire, so that they sleep with heads on knees or lying as though dead in huddled postures. They wake at intervals, asking for water, and then sleep again. There are such crowds of these field-grey men that they are astounded by their own numbers, and when questioned speak gloomily of the doom that is upon their rule. "What do you think of it all?" asked an Irish officer of a German officer whom he captured in Wytschaete village. The man shook his head and said in good English, "We are done for." Another officer taken by English troops on the northern sector of the attack was frank in revealing his tragic thoughts when he heard the mines go up. He thought, so he says, "Thank Heaven the British are attacking. Now I can surrender. Yesterday my division had three good regiments, now they do not exist. This attack ought to end the war." Let us not base too much optimistic belief on such words by German prisoners.