"_August 20._--The conceited English have ranged themselves up against us at absurd odds, our airmen say. [This, it must be remembered, was written concerning the time of the great retreat, when the German forces were in overwhelming numerical superiority.] "_August 25._--An English shell burst on a Red Cross wagon to-day--full of English. Ha-ha! Serve the swine right. Still, they fight well. I salute the officer who kept on swearing at Germany and her Emperor in his agony--and then to ask calmly for a bath! These English! We have scarcely time enough to bury our dead, so they are being weighted in the river." The writer of this diary was captured, so his entries extend no farther. The way in which his views of "the conceited English" altered as time went on is worthy of note. A R.A.M.C. officer attached to the Seaforths gives an idea of the way in which the regiment conducted its daily business. Each morning the regiment would "stand to arms" at about three o'clock, and at four or five o'clock the men would move on, either with or without breakfast--which consisted of tea and biscuits, and bacon if there were time to cook it. Sleeping accommodation varied in quality and extent from night to night, ranging from a ploughed field or an orchard to the floor of a deserted house. Often the men were so sleepy that they lay in the road--quite contentedly, since they were allowed to lie. "I am doing less than the men," adds the writer. "Just think of them: march, march, march, and then when we sleep it falls to the lot of many to guard the outposts with no chance of shelter, and then go on marching through the next day, wet, and hoping to dry as they go. Only the highest praise can be given to these men. "At present [on the Aisne] we are entrenched. Our first day in this place, where we have been for five days, was awful, for we were under fire the whole of the day, with practically no protection, and our total of killed and wounded amounted to seventy. The men never wavered, and gaps were always filled. Grand are the Highland men, and grander still will be the account they will render; I am lucky to be with such men."