=_No Value on Human Life._=--I select these instances from my notes at random--they could be multiplied many times--as indications of the temper of the German troops. They might, perhaps, be dismissed as the unauthorised acts of small patrols were it not that there is only too much evidence to show that the soldiers are taught by their superiors to set no value upon human life, and things have been done which could not have been done without superior orders. For example, at Bailleul, La Gorgue, and Doulieu, where no resistance of any kind was offered to the German troops, and where the latter were present in force under the command of commissioned officers, civilians were taken in groups, and after being forced to dig their own graves were shot by firing parties in the presence of an officer. At Doulieu, which is a small village, eleven civilians were shot in this way; they were strangers to the place, and it was only by subsequent examination of the papers found on their bodies that some of them were identified as inhabitants of neighbouring villages. If these men had been guilty of any act of hostility it is not clear why they were not shot at once in their own villages, and inquiries at some of the villages from which they were taken have revealed no knowledge of any act of the kind. It is, however, a common practice for the German troops to seize the male inhabitants (especially those of military age) of the places they occupy and take them away on their retreat. Twenty-five were so taken from Bailleul and nothing has been heard of them since. There is only too much reason to suppose that the same fate has overtaken them as that which befell the unhappy men executed at Doulieu. =_A Possible Explanation._=--I believe the explanation of these sinister proceedings to be that the men were compelled to dig trenches for the enemy, to give information as to the movement of their own troops, and to act as guides (all clearly practices which are a breach of the laws of war and of the Hague Regulations), and then, their presence being inconvenient and their knowledge of the enemy's positions and movements compromising, they were put to death. This is not a mere surmise. The male inhabitants of Warneton were forced to dig trenches for the enemy, and an inhabitant of Merris was compelled to go with the German troops and act as a guide; it is notorious that the official manual of the German General Staff _Kriegsbrauch im Landskriege_ condones, and indeed indoctrinates, such breaches of the laws of war. British soldiers who were taken prisoners by the Germans and subsequently escaped were compelled by their captors to dig trenches, and in a field note-book found on a soldier of the 100th Saxon Body Grenadiers (XIIth Corps) occurs the following significant passage:--