“My two prisoners worked hard at digging trenches. At midday I got the order to rejoin at village with my prisoners. I was very glad, as I had been ordered to shoot them both as the French attacked. Thank God it was not necessary.” In this connexion it is important to observe that the German policy of holding a whole town or village responsible for the acts of isolated individuals, whether by the killing of hostages or by decimation or by a wholesale _battue_ of the inhabitants, has undoubtedly resulted in the grossest and most irrelevant cruelties. A single shot fired in or near a place occupied by the Germans--it may be a shot from a French patrol or a German rifle let off by accident or mistake or in a drunken affray--at once places the whole community in peril, and it seems to be at once assumed that the civil inhabitants are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent. This was clearly the case at Armentières. Frequently, as the field note-book of a Saxon officer testifies, they are not allowed the opportunity. Indeed there seems some reason to suppose that the German troops hold the civil inhabitants responsible even for the acts of lawful belligerents, and, as my inquiries at Merris and Messines go to show, a French patrol cannot operate in the vicinity of a French or Belgian village without exposing the inhabitants to sanguinary punishment or predatory fines. There is not the slightest evidence to show that French civilians have fired upon German troops, and in spite of the difficulty of proving a negative there is a good deal of reason to reject such a supposition. Throughout the communes of the region of Northern France which I have investigated notices were posted up at the mairie requiring all the inhabitants to deposit any arms in their possession with the civil authorities, and the orders appear to have been complied with, as they were very strictly enforced.