"No," he replied slowly; "I am glad. To us Germans this war means a fight to the death; there are only two ways of escape: being crippled for life—or this. You will wonder at my confessing that I am glad, but I have left behind me in Heidelberg all that I love best on earth—my wife and two little children——" His voice choked and tears came into his eyes, but after a moment he sighed: "God knows whether I shall ever see them again—for me the war is over—it is just as well." Do you blame one for forgetting that this man was an enemy? "One touch of sympathy" in spite of the horrors of war, still "makes the whole world kin." We may hate the Germans _en masse_, but heart cannot help going out to heart, and in the weeks that followed I confess, without apology, that I learned to look upon this man as a friend. It was about four o’clock the following afternoon that Wilson approached me, and, pulling himself up to attention, said: "Th’ nurse on Saskatchewan ward, zur, ses as that German corporal ain’t had any feed t’day." "Why not? I asked him. "Dunno, zur, but he ain’t, an’ she’s ast me to bring th’ Orderly Officer to see him." We had laid it down as a principle that German patients, in every instance, were to be treated the same as our own Tommies, so that it was annoying to hear that one of our men had been guilty of Hun tactics. Although I despised this corporal more than any of the others, neglect, even of him, could not be countenanced in a hospital. I hastened up the stairs to investigate. The nurse corroborated Wilson’s statement. The German had complained to her that he had had only a light breakfast and no dinner, although the other men in his room had received theirs. I called the ward orderly. "Why did you not give this man his dinner?" I asked him sternly. "The meat was all gone when I went for it, sir," he replied, without looking me in the eye, "but I gave him a dish of custard." Evidently the orderly had made up his mind to punish the _Bosche_, and while I sympathised secretly with his antipathy to the individual, I couldn’t condone his disobedience or the principle. "Come with me," I commanded, "and I’ll ask him myself." We entered a room which contained only three beds. In the farthest was a burly giant of a Highlander, in the middle the wretched German corporal, and nearest to us was a Munsterite of prodigious muscle and who was but slightly wounded in the leg. I asked the German in English, which I well knew he understood, whether he had received his dinner or not. He affected not to understand me, and answered in German. As my German is not as fluent as my French, and I knew that he also spoke this language and might have some secret reason for not wishing to speak English, I tried him in French. He pretended not to understand this either. My opinion of him sank even lower. I tried him then in German, and he replied quite readily in his own tongue.