“We have been made fools of,” they declare without exception. “You are not decadent! Far from it! Nor are your cannon. Fine tales they fed us up with! If our leaders had been the humanitarians they claim to be, it is obvious that we should have a few friends somewhere in the world. We should not have every one against us. And we poor devils have to pay for the folly. It’s altogether too bad! Oh that peace may come quickly! Take Alsace-Lorraine if you like. What on earth does it matter? Take anything. What difference does it make to us whether we are governed from Paris or from Berlin?” A fat _Unteroffizier_ spoke as follows: “I honestly prefer the French to the Prussians. The French are good fellows. They feel compassion; they share their bread with us. But the Prussians! It’s kicks we get from them. A pack of swelled-heads who imagine they can do anything they like, who want everything for themselves, who bamboozle their own people and refuse to give them any rights! There is but one thing we want: to live at peace with the world. Instead of that they make us go and kill. Why? Does any one know why? What do we gain by it? The villages are full of widows and disabled men. It is even worse in the towns, where lots of working-class families are positively starving. You fellows are lucky. France is rich. France can send parcels to her prisoners. All that we can do is to draw our belts tighter. They lead us to the slaughter while they leave our wives and children to suffer. And how it drags. Peace! Let’s have done with it! Peace at any price!” For the last six months I have not heard a single German soldier use any other language than this. Wounded returning to the front, men of the _Landwehr_ or the _Landsturm_ on their way to the fighting-line, they are unanimous. If but the tenth part of their private grumblings were to be translated into action there would be revolution throughout the country. To speak frankly, these mutterings do not evoke my admiration. They are not the fruit of an indignant conscience, they do not manifest the reaction of inner freedoms which have been outraged and deceived, and which come to their own again in the form of a reasserted dignity. One hears in them nothing but the cry of the beaten and overloaded mule. He wants his peaceful stable, bran, fresh water, warm and comfortable litter. But there is no occasion to be alarmed, for he dreads the whip, and his master is an adept in drubbing him all the way up the hill.