My eye slipped down the two columns of close printing in which the mercy of the All Highest was revealed to the world. I learnt that the All Highest’s new Imperial Chancellor was celebrating his new office by playing a little trick on his own credulity; he was pretending that by Christmas Germany would have sponged out all her debts of infamy with words. Prince Max of Baden was in such a hurry to bring good-will upon earth that he had cabled to President Wilson proposals for a lasting peace; he had gone to this trouble and expense not because of anything that was happening on the Western Front, but solely “in the interests of suffering humanity.” Glancing at a parallel column I read words which would have led me to doubt the sincerity of any one less august: “Germans Defeated in All-day Battle. Tanks do Great Execution among Hun Infantry. 1000 Prisoners Taken.” Then I turned back to see what this spokesman of a nation of humanitarians had to say for himself. I learnt that Germany had always been keen on the League of Nations: that she was anxious, as she had always been anxious, to rehabilitate Belgium; that her armies were still invincible, and that the Western Front was still unbroken; that the Kaiser was God’s latest revelation of His own perfection and His magnanimous shadow upon earth. Liars! Blasphemous liars! How can one treat with a nation which has not even the sense to make its shamming decent and plausible? On the Western Front to-day in their ignominious retreat the Germans are showing their ancient ferocity for destruction. I know, for I have just come from before Cambrai. Cities are being levelled before they make their exit; civilian populations are being carried away captive; trains piled high with loot precede their departure; they leave behind them the desolation of death. While with “incomparable heroism” their armies are executing these brutalities, their Chancellor recalls us to a lost humanity and presupposes that we shall accept his professions at their face value. I looked up from my paper at the Sunday crowd, chatting gaily as it passed through gaudy splendours into lunch. They were amazingly unmoved by anything that the German Chancellor had said. So far as their attitude betrayed them, he might never have become Chancellor. If I may state the case colloquially, they didn’t care a damn. There were American officers newly landed, men with the Mons ribbon, who had been in the game from the crack of the first gun, wounded Johnnies like myself, wearing the blue armlet which denotes that you are still in hospital. One and all were seizing this jolly moment before they again caught sight of the trenches and carried on with pounding the Hun. They weren’t going to spoil their leisure by discussing the perturbations of a German Chancellor.