The reverend fathers with clasped hands moved precisely as if they were conducting some religious ceremonial among their flocks in their beloved churches. But the pace was too funereal for the advocates of the goose-step. They hustled the priests into quicker movement, not in the rough manner usually practised with us, but by clubbing the unfortunate religionists across the shoulders with the stocks of their rifles, lowering their bayonets to them and giving vent to blood-freezing curses, fierce oaths, coarse jeers, and rewarding the desperate endeavours of the priests to fulfil the desires of their captors with mocking laughter and ribaldry. The brutal manner in which they were driven into the camp as if they were sheep going to the slaughter, made our blood boil. More than one of us clenched our fists and made a half-movement forward as if to interfere. But we could do nothing and so had to control our furious indignation. However, the moment the priests entered Sennelager we received a respite. Officers and guards turned their savagery and spite from us to visit it upon these unhappy victims by night and by day and at every trick and turn. Clubbing with the rifle was the most popular means of compelling them to obey this, or to do that. More than once I have seen one of the aged religionists fall to the ground beneath a rifle blow which struck him across the back. No indignity conceivable, besides a great many indescribable, was spared those venerable men, and they bowed to their revolting treatment with a meekness which seemed strangely out of place. After one more than usually ferocious manifestation of attack I questioned our guard to ascertain the reason for this unprecedented treatment and why the priests had been especially singled out for such infamous ferocity. "Ach!" he hissed with a violent expectoration, "They fired upon our brave comrades in Belgium. They rang the bells of their churches to summon the women to the windows to fire upon our brothers as they passed. The dogs! We'll show them! We'll break them before we have finished. They won't want to murder our brave troops again!" The words were jerked out with such fearful fury that I refrained from pursuing the subject. Later I had a chat with one of the oldest priests. It was only with difficulty we could understand one another, but it was easy to discover that the charges were absolutely unfounded, and were merely the imagination of the distorted and savage Prussian mind when slipped from the leash to loot, assault and kill for the first time in his life.