The story carries conviction by its detail. Finally, there are the disquieting remarks of German soldiers, repeated by this same witness, as to the British prisoners whom they had shot. The whole lesson of history is that when troops are allowed to start murder one can never say how or when it will stop. It may no longer be part of a deliberate, calculated policy of murder by the German Government. But it has undoubtedly been so in the past, and we cannot say when it will end. Such incidents will, I fear, make peace an impossibility in our generation, for whatever statesmen may write upon paper can never affect the deep and bitter resentment which a war so conducted must leave behind it. Other German characteristics we can ignore. The consistent, systematic lying of the German Press, or the grotesque blasphemies of the Kaiser, can be met by us with contemptuous tolerance. After all, what is is, and neither falsehood nor bombast will alter it. But this policy of murder deeply affects not only ourselves but the whole framework of civilisation so slowly and painfully built upwards by the human race. * * * * * VII MADNESS We have all, I suppose, read and marvelled at the wonderful German "song of hate." This has been so much admired over the water that Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria (who had just stated his bitter hatred of us in a prose army order) distributed copies of the verses to his Bavarians as a stimulant in their long, unsuccessful tussle with our troops at Ypres. In case the reader has forgotten its flavour, I append a typical verse: "We will never forgo our hate. We have all but a single hate. We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone-- ENGLAND."