Nothing has impressed Tommy Atkins more than the lack of _morale_ in the German soldiers. "Oh, they are brave enough, poor devils; but they've got no heart in the fighting," he says. That is absolutely true. Hundreds of thousands of them have no notion of what they are fighting for. Some of the prisoners declared that when they left the garrisons they were "simply told they were going to maneuvers"; "others," says a Royal Artilleryman, "had no idea they were fighting the English"; according to a Highland officer, surrendering Germans said their fellows had been assured that "America and Japan were fighting on their side, and that another Boer war was going on"; and a final illusion was dispelled when those captured by the Royal Irish were told that the civil war in Ireland had been "put off!" It is not only that the men lack this moral preparation for war. Their system of fighting is demoralizing. "They come on in close formation, thousands of them, just like sheep being driven to the slaughter," is the description that nine soldiers out of every ten give of the Germans going into action. "We just mow them down in heaps," says an artilleryman. "Lord, even a woman couldn't miss hitting them," is the comment from the Infantry. And as for the cavalry: "Well, we just makes holes in them," adds one of the Dragoons. At first they didn't take cover at all, but just marched into action with their drums beating and bands playing, "like a blooming parade," as Atkins puts it. After the first slaughter, however, they shrank from the attack, and there is ample evidence of eyewitnesses that the German infantry often had to be lashed into battle by their officers. "I saw a colonel striking his own men with his sword to prevent them running away," is one of the many statements. Revolvers, too, were freely used for the same purpose.