One wonders when one sees a German face to face, is this really one of those devils who wrought such devastation--for devastation they have surely wrought. You can hardly believe it, for he seems much the same as other soldiers. I can assure you that there is none of that insensate hatred that one hears about, out here. We are out to kill, and kill we do, at any and every opportunity. But, when all is done and the battle is over, the splendid universal "soldier spirit" comes over all the men, and we cannot help thinking that Kipling must have been in the firing line when he wrote that "East is East and West is West" thing. Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other night four German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our men went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and buried him. They did it with just the same reverence and sadness as they do to our own dear fellows. I went to look at the grave the next morning, and one of the most uncouth-looking men in my company had placed a cross at the head of the grave, and had written on it: Here lies a German, We don't know his name, He died bravely fighting For his Fatherland. And under that, "got mit uns," (sic,) that being the highest effort of all the men at German. Not bad for a bloodthirsty Briton, eh? Really, that shows the spirit. I don't believe there is a man living who, when first interviewing an 11-inch howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten, one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible! They hit a house. You can see the great shell--a black streak--just before it strikes, then, before you hear the explosion, the whole house simply lifts up into the air, apparently quite silently; then you hear the roar, and the whole earth shakes. In the place where the house was there is a huge fountain-spout of what looks like pink fluff. It is the pulverized bricks. Then a monstrous shoot of black smoke towering up a hundred feet or more, and, finally, there is a curious willow-like formation, and then--you duck, as huge pieces of shell, and house, and earth, and haystack tumble over your head. And yet, do you know, it is really remarkable how little damage they do against earth trenches. With a whole morning's shelling, not a single man of my company was killed, although not a single shell missed what it had aimed at by more than fifty yards. That makes all the difference, that fifty yards. If you only keep your head down, you are as safe as houses; exactly, you will remark, "as safe as houses." The Things the Wounded Talk About [A British Surgeon, in The London Times, Dec. 22, 1914.]