Most of the prisoners taken on this ground were Saxons, and those I have seen marching down to a captivity which they prefer to the field of battle are men of a good physique, and smart, soldierly look. It is astonishing how quickly they recover from the effect of bombardment and the great horror of battle as soon as they get beyond the range of shell-fire. But they are gloomy and disheartened. The officers especially acknowledge that things are going badly for Germany, and say that there is, for the time at least until the new class is ready, a dearth of men of fighting age, so that the drafts they get are miserable and unfit. They are overwhelmed with the thought of the monstrous gun-power which we have brought against them to counteract their own artillery, which once had the mastery, and they are struck by the audacity of our air service. Certainly our flying men have been doing all in their power to make life intolerable on the German side of the lines. I have already described how they went out on Tuesday night and broke up the columns of men marching to attack us. One of these birds found a different kind of prey. It was opposite the Australian front where a team of German gunners were getting a gun away. Our airman flew low over the heads of the gunners and played his machine-gun on to them and dropped bombs. He smashed up the gun-limber and laid out the gunners, and the gun remains there still, with the bodies of men and horses around it. To-day out beyond Ypres I saw flights of our men going out again beyond the German lines for that battle in the air which has never ceased since the battle of Flanders two months ago. The weather is still in our favour, and there is a blue sky to-day and a soft, golden light over all this Flemish countryside where our troops go marching up to the lines with their bands playing, or lie resting in the hop-fields on the way. That old place of horror, the Yser Canal, reflected the blue above, and in the air there was that sense of peace which belongs to the golden days of autumn. But the guns were loud, and the flight of their shells went crying through the sky. * * * * * OCTOBER 2