That is when the war is successful; but when defeat looms near, whatever the courtly ministers may urge, the individual will contrast in his own mind the ravages, that another two years of warfare will entail, with the possible emoluments that may lie at the end of them. He will say to himself, “It is reasonable to expect that, by fighting for another two years, we may eventually get better terms than we should get now, if we signed a peace. But to me personally, is the difference sufficient to warrant the sufferings of a protracted war?” And the answer, as often as not, is “No.” That is, as far as one can judge, the sort of argument that presented itself to the individual German in the weeks following Foch’s resumption of the attack. And in determining the forces that went to the framing of that “no,” the most important thing to realise is that Germany was actually starving. That this is so, a certain portion of the Press has, during the last month, attempted to deny; and it is rumoured that the armies of occupation have found the German towns well stocked with food. If this last report is true, I do not profess to be able to explain it; but of one thing there can be no doubt, while we were prisoners in Mainz the German people there were not merely hungry, they were starving. It is true that meat was obtainable in restaurants, but only at a price so high as to be well beyond the means of even the moderately wealthy. A dinner, consisting of a plate of soup and a plate of meat and vegetables, would in places cost as much as twelve to fifteen marks, and the majority of men and women had to exist entirely on their rations. Of many of the necessaries of life it was impossible to get enough, especially in the case of butter and milk and cheese. Of meat there was very little, and flour could only be bought at an exorbitant price. The bread ration was small, and eggs were rarely obtainable. Potatoes alone were plentiful, and two years of such a diet had considerably lowered the nation’s vitality. In times of sickness this weakness produced heavy fatalities, especially among the children. A German father even went to the lengths of offering an English officer a hundred marks for a shilling packet of chocolate to give to his son who was sick. And all the children born during the last two years are miserably weak and puny; some of them even having no nails on their toes and fingers. “You are not a father, so you will not understand,” a German soldier said to me. “But it is a most terrible thing to watch, as I have watched during the last four years, a little boy growing weaker and paler month after month; and I can tell you that when I look at my little boy, all that I want is that this war should end, I do not care how.”