The redemption of Cambrai, St. Quentin, etc., we only discovered after tracing on the map insignificant places appearing in the war-news allowed us as reached or passed by the Allied forces; usually farms or other trifling localities formerly unknown to fame. Delightful as these discoveries were, they could awake no thrill of confident enthusiasm because overshadowed by the contemptuous tone in which each slight advance and the appalling cost to French and English was presented. Moreover, every Allied success was attributed solely to the clever military strategy of the Germans. Above all was belittled any progress made by the British, whose abridged and doctored communiqués were always presented in weak and childlike terms that made them appear ridiculous. The English never knew, until several days after evacuation, that the Germans had withdrawn from any locality for which they were fighting. It was stated in an official announcement from Berlin, dated 8th September: “_Le détachement du contact avec l’ennemi s’operait presque toujours à l’insu de l’ennemi._” Another official statement (13th August) was as follows: “The British offensive between the Ancre and the Avre has been checked, after the strong and vain attacks which have cost them such great losses, at the limit of the old battlefield of the Somme.... On the other hand, the French have once more placed in line many fresh divisions in order to attempt to pierce, in spite of all, our positions between the Avre and the Oise to which the Germans have retired in so able a manner (_d’une manière si habile_) after having inflicted such heavy losses on their adversaries.” Niggardly as this information was, we were of course able to derive from it a certain amount of encouragement. But this was damped by the boastful German confidence, the constantly reiterated threat of another vast offensive which would bring the war to an end glorious for Germany; the awful descriptions of French towns reduced to heaps of ashes, and the incalculable losses of the Allies. In September, when matters were much harder than we suspected for the Central Powers, a new voice came from the monster’s mouth—or rather a still more pitiful, soft-hearted cry for poor suffering humanity!—from these people who, after two thousand years of civilization that had gained for them so high a place in the world, had revived, without cause, the treachery and barbarity that had made them odious to and distrusted by Cæsar; who committed crimes in 1914-15 and 1916 that will haunt the world’s memory for ever! What a mockery must those German pleas for humanity have appeared to the people of Tamines, Aerschot, Louvain, and other districts of Belgium still grieving for those ruthlessly murdered, still morally suffering from the horrors to which they were unjustly subjected!