This return to wholesomeness is dependent on two things: a thorough defeat in this war, so that the German people will see that a machine fails when it seeks to crush the human spirit, and an internal revolution in the conception of individual duty to the state, so that they will regain the virtues of common humanity. The water-tight compartments, which they have built up between the inner voice of conscience in the individual life and the outer compulsion of the state, must be broken through. IV THE BOOMERANG One of the best jokes of the war has been put over on the Germans by themselves. Here I quote from a German diary of which I have seen the original. It is written by a sub-officer of the Landwehr, of the 46th Reserve Regiment, the 9th Company, recruited from the province of Posen. He and his men are on the march, and the date is August 21. He writes: "We are informed of things to make us shudder concerning the wickedness of the French, as, for instance, that our wounded, lying on the ground, have their eyes put out, their ears and noses cut. We are told that we ought to behave without any limits. I have the impression that all this is told us for the sole purpose that no one shall stay behind or take the French side; our men also are of the same opinion." On August 23 he writes: "I learn from different quarters that the French maltreat our prisoners; a woman has put out the eyes of an Uhlan." By August 24 all this begins to have its effect on the imperfectly developed natures of his comrades, and he writes: "I find among our troops a great excitability against the French." There we can see the machinery of hate in full operation. The officers state the lies to the soldiers. They travel fast by rumor. The primitive, emotional men respond with ever-increasing excitement till they readily carry out murder. Let us see how all this is working back home in the Fatherland. I have seen the photographic reproduction of a letter written by a German woman to her husband (from whose body it was taken), in which she tells him not to spare the French dogs ("Hunden"), neither the soldiers nor the women. She goes on to give her reason. The French, she says, men and women, are cruel to German prisoners. The story had reached her. The German Chancellor in September, 1914, stated in an interview for the United States: "Your fellow countrymen are told that German troops have burned Belgian villages and towns, but you are not told that young Belgian girls have put out the eyes of the defenseless wounded on the field of battle. Belgian women have cut the throats of our soldiers as they slept, men to whom they had given hospitality."