I saw this morning large numbers of prisoners taken during the past twenty-four hours and just brought in. They had the look of men who have been through hell. They were drenched with rain, which poured down their big steel helmets. Their top-boots were full of water, which squelched out at every step, and their sunken eyes stared out of ash-grey faces with the look of sick and hunted animals. Many of them had cramp in the stomach through long exposure and hunger before being captured, and they groaned loudly and piteously. Many of them wept while being interrogated, protesting bitterly that they hated the war and wanted nothing but peace. They have no hope of victory for their country. An advance into Russia fills them with no new illusions, but seems to them only a lengthening of the general misery. They do not hide the sufferings of their people at home, and say that in the towns there is bitter want, and only in the rural districts is there enough to eat. In the field they are filled with gloomy forebodings, and live in terror of our tremendous gun-fire. The older men, non-commissioned officers who have come back after wounds, and other soldiers of long training, say that the boys of the young classes who are now filling up the ranks have no staying power under shell-fire and no fighting spirit. Among the prisoners I saw to-day I think about a quarter of them, or perhaps a little less, were these young boys, anæmic-looking lads, with terror in their eyes. The others were more hardy-looking men, though pale and worn. It is certain that they made no great fight yesterday when our men were near them, except when they still had cover in concrete emplacements. And it is no wonder that all fight has gone out of them. Some even of our own men were startled and stunned by the terrific blast of our gun-fire. Some of these men have told me that when they went forward to get into line before the attack, they had to pass through mile after mile of our batteries, the heavy guns behind, and gradually reaching the lighter batteries forward, until they arrived at the field-guns, so thickly placed that at some points they were actually wheel to wheel. The night was dark, but there was no darkness among these batteries. Their flashes lit up their neighbourhood with lurid torches, blinding the eyes of the troops on the march, and all about the air rocked with the blast of their fire and the noise was so great that men were deafened. As the troops went forward for five or six miles to the assembly-lines flights of shells passed over their heads in a great rush through space, and it was terrifying even to men like one of those I met to-day, who has become familiar with the noise of gun-fire since the early days of Ypres and the fury of the Somme. But the worst came when the field-guns began their rapid fire before yesterday's dawn. It was like the fire of machine-guns in its savage sweep, but instead of