Now it can be Told

The character of European peoples failed in common sense and in Christian charity. It did not fail in courage to endure great agonies, to suffer death largely, to be obedient to the old tradition of patriotism and to the stoic spirit of old fighting races.

In courage I do not think there was much difference between the chief combatants. The Germans, as a race, were wonderfully brave until their spirit was broken by the sure knowledge of defeat and by lack of food. Many times through all those years they marched shoulder to shoulder, obedient to discipline, to certain death, as I saw them on the Somme, like martyrs. They marched for their Fatherland, inspired by the spirit of the German race, as it had entered their souls by the memory of old German songs, old heroic ballads, their German home life, their German women, their love of little old towns on hillsides or in valleys, by all the meaning to them of that word Germany, which is like the name of England to us -- who is fool enough to think otherwise? -- and fought often, a thousand times, to the death, as I saw their bodies heaped in the fields of the Somme and round their pillboxes in Flanders and in the last phase of the war behind the Hindenburg line round their broken batteries on the way of Mons and Le Cateau. The German people endured years of semi-starvation and a drain of blood greater than any other fighting people -- two million dead -- before they lost all vitality, hope, and pride and made their abject surrender. At the beginning they were out for conquest, inspired by arrogance and pride. Before the end they fought desperately to defend the Fatherland from the doom which cast its black shadow on them as it drew near. They were brave, those Germans, whatever the brutality of individual men and the cold-blooded cruelty of their commanders.