I have suffered greatly at being thus cut off from the view to be obtained from the ramparts, and this has affected me hardly less than the short commons. The number of sentries has been tripled. We are forbidden to wear civilian clothing unless it has been dyed red. Headquarters has even compelled the chasseurs alpins and the colonial infantrymen to paint red stripes on their uniforms under the pretext that these were too much like civilian clothing. It has become impossible to get the most trifling supplement to the official rations. M. Schwappach had a _Landwehrmann_ court-martialled because he had sold some chocolate to the prisoners. The guard is terrorized. The loaf which used to last three days must now last five, so that our daily allowance of bread is 7½ oz. This would mean sheer starvation if we received nothing from France. No more coffee, no more roasted barley: roasted acorns merely. Those who get more parcels than the others have a regular train of dependents—famished men. My own dependents are chiefly soldiers from the invaded regions. Having written a strongly worded letter which was sent back to me from Ingolstadt (I am in extremely bad odour at headquarters), I am threatened, should the offence be repeated, with being completely deprived of the right to receive or send letters. I have already been punished with three weeks of this measure. I have had some very remarkable discussions with the commandant. These people want us to love them. They demand, filled with indignation, our reasons for not loving them. If we give them our reasons in plain terms, and support our assertions with facts and dates, lo! ten days’ prison, on bread and water! M. von Stengel, where are you? Anyhow, we now know what German discipline is. We know it in all its purity and all its splendour. There is no longer any one to temper its severities. THE RUSSIANS _April 20, 1915._ The Russians whom we were dreading have arrived. For the last three months the Germans have been threatening us with them as with the plague, adding: “In the camps where the French and the Russians are together they always come to blows.” One morning the _Oberstabsarzt_ inoculated us against cholera. Every one said: “They are coming!” The _Feldwebel_ did in fact go through the casemates, allotting five to one, ten to another, and fifteen to some. In the afternoon, groups were watching from the outer part of the slope which commands the road from Ingolstadt. There was much grumbling. Some were cursing the Germans for wishing to poison us with the deadly Asiatic disease. Some, frightened by the inoculation, were already imagining themselves black and rotten. At six in the evening, an hour earlier than usual, the electric bell rang for the evacuation of the courts. Immediately afterwards, the forty-nine heads of rooms were summoned, were drawn up in line beyond the bridge, and were told to wait.