The dependability of divisions also varied with their seniority in date of promotion. The latest formed regular divisions and the second-line territorial divisions, whatever their recruiting area, were usually inferior. Their senior officers and warrant-officers were not good enough. We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in trenches, taken in nationalities. We agreed on a list like this, in descending order: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scottish; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portuguese; Belgians; French. The Belgians and French were put there for spite; they were not really dirtier than the Algerians or Portuguese. Atrocities. Propaganda reports of atrocities were, we agreed, ridiculous. Atrocities against civilians were surely few. We remembered that while the Germans were in a position to commit atrocities against enemy civilians, Germany itself, except for the early Russian cavalry raid, had never had the enemy on her soil. We no longer believed accounts of unjustified German atrocities in Belgium; know the Belgians now at first-hand. By atrocities we meant, specifically, rape, mutilation and torture, not summary shootings of suspected spies, harbourers of spies, _francs-tireurs_, or disobedient local officials. If the atrocity list was to include the accidental-on-purpose bombing or machine-gunning of civilians from the air, the Allies were now committing as many atrocities as the Germans. French and Belgian civilians had often tried to win our sympathy and presents by exhibiting mutilations of children—stumps of hands and feet, for instance—representing them as deliberate, fiendish atrocities when they were merely the result of shell-fire, British or French shell-fire as likely as not. We did not believe that rape was any more common on the German side of the line than on the Allied side. It was unnecessary. Of course, a bully-beef diet, fear of death, and absence of wives made ample provision of women necessary in the occupied areas. No doubt the German army authorities provided brothels in the principal French towns behind the line, as did the French on the Allied side. But the voluntary system would suffice. We did not believe stories of forcible enlistment of women.