"I smoke about ten cigars a day. And if it hadn't been for these cigars my good-humor in these dangers and fatigues would be much less. Smoking gives me to a degree calm and content. With it I have something to occupy my thoughts. It is necessary for one to see these things in order to understand." Later he writes: "October 15, 1914. It had been planned at first that we should go into quarters at Billy (Billy sous-Nangiennes), where the whole civil population had been already forced out, and whatever was movable had been taken away or made useless. This method of conducting war is directly barbarous. I am astonished how we can make any complaint over the behavior of the Russians. We conduct ourselves in France much worse, and on every occasion and on every small pretext we have burned and plundered. But God is just and sees everything. His mills grind slowly, but exceedingly small." ("Diese Art kriegführung ist direkt barbarisch ... bei jeder Gelegenheit wird unter irgend einem Vorwande gebrannt und geplündert. Aber Gott ist gerecht und sieht alles: seine Mühlen mahlen langsam aber schrecklich klein.") [Illustration: "One village after another to the flames. We then came to the roadside ditches, where we ate cherries"--so writes Sebastian Weishaupt of the 3 Bavarian Infantry.] [Illustration: "We have burned and plundered. But God is just and sees everything. His mills grind slowly, but exceeding small."--The diary of an officer of the 46 Reserve Infantry Regiment.] These extracts which I have given are from diaries of which I have examined the originals, and gone word by word over the German, in the penciling of the writer. The revelation of these diaries is that the Germans have not yet built their moral foundations. They have shot up to some heights. But it is not a deep-centered structure they have reared. It is scaffolding and fresco. We shall send them back home to begin again. Sebastian Weishaupt and Private Hassemer and Corporal Menge must stay at home. They must not come to other countries to try to rule them, nor to any other peoples, to try to teach them. Their hand is somewhat bloody. That is my feeling in reading these diaries of German soldiers--poor lost children of the human race, back in the twilight of time, so far to climb before you will reach civilization. We must be very patient with you through the long years it will take to cast away the slime and winnow out the simple goodness, which is also there. III MORE DIARIES In former European wars foul practices were committed by individual members of armies. But the total army in each country was a small hired band of men, representing only the fractional part of one per cent of the population. It was in no way representative of the mind of the people. Of the present German Army, Professor Dr. Max Planck, of the University of Berlin, a distinguished physicist, has recently written: