“Hostile! Why, sir?... The war is over and we can now be friends again. Besides, the respectable people and the middle-classes”--he used the French word _bourgeoisie_--“will be glad of your coming. It is a protection against the evil elements who are destroying property and behaving in a criminal way--the sailors of the Fleet, and the low ruffians.” _The war is over and we can be friends again!_ That sentence in the young man’s speech astonished me by its directness and simplicity. Was that the mental attitude of the German people? Did they think that England would forget and shake hands? Did they not realise the passion of hatred that had been aroused in England by the invasion of Belgium, the early atrocities, the submarine war, the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the execution of Nurse Cavell, the air-raids over London--all the range and sweep of German frightfulness? Then I looked at our troopers. Some of them were chatting with the Germans in a friendly way. One of them close to me gave a cigarette to a boy in a college cap who was talking to him in schoolboy English. Another was in conversation with two German girls who were patting his horse. We had been in the German village ten minutes. There was no sign of hatred here, on one side or the other. Already something had happened which in England, if they knew, would seem monstrous and incredible. A spell had been broken; the spell which, for four years, had dominated the souls of men and women. At least it seemed to have been broken in the village where for the first time English soldiers met the people of the nation they had fought and beaten. These men of the first cavalry patrol did not seem to be nourishing thoughts of hatred and vengeance. They were not, it seemed, remembering atrocities. They were meeting fellow-mortals with human friendliness, and seemed inclined to talk to them and pass the time of day. Astounding! I saw Wickham Brand talking to a group of German children--boys in sailor caps with the words _Hindenburg_, _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, _Unterseeboot_, printed in gold letters on the cap-bands, and girls with yellow pig-tails and coloured frocks. He pulled out a packet of chocolate from a deep pocket of his “British warm,” and broke it into small pieces. “Who would like a bit?” he asked in German, and there was a chorus of “_Bitte!... Bitte schön!_” He held out a piece to the prettiest child, a tiny fairy-like thing with gold-spun hair, and she blushed very vividly, and curtseyed when she took the chocolate, and then kissed Brand’s long lean hand. Young Harding was standing near. He had an utterly bewildered expression, as a man who sees the ground work of his faith slipping beneath him. He turned to me as I strolled his way, and looked at me with wide astonished eyes.