Tell me, dear husband, are you a
criminal when you fight in the trenches, or why do people treat women
and children here as such? . . .
"For the poor here it is terrible, and yet the rich, the gilded ones,
the bloated aristocrats, gobble up everything in front of our very
eyes . . . All soldiers--friend and foe--ought to throw down their
weapons and go on strike, so that this war which enslaves the people
more than ever may cease.
Thousands of letters, all in this strain, were reaching the German
soldiers on the Somme, and they did not strengthen the morale of men
already victims of terror and despair.
Behind the lines deserters were shot in batches. To those in front
came Orders of the Day warning them, exhorting them, commanding them
to hold fast.
"To the hesitating and faint-hearted in the regiment," says one of
these Orders, "I would say the following:
"What the Englishman can do the German can do also. Or if, on the
other hand, the Englishman really is a better and superior being, he
would be quite justified in his aim as regards this war, viz.
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