Why we’re decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred. All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same treatment as our own men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken. The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.