were physically, mentally, and morally debased. They were a race of devils, and they could not be allowed to live. Civilisation could only be saved by their extermination, or if that were impossible, of their utter subjection. All the piled-up slaughter of British youth and French youth was to him justified by the conviction that the last man of ours must die if need be in order to crush Germany, and kill Germans. It is true that he had not died, nor even had been wounded, but that was his ill-luck. He had been in the cavalry, and had not been given many chances of fighting. Before the last phase, when the cavalry came into their own, he had been transferred to the Intelligence (though he did not speak a word of German) in order to organise their dispatch-rider service. He knew nothing about dispatch-riding, but his cousin was the brother-in-law of a General's nephew, and he had been highly recommended for this appointment, which had surprised and annoyed him. Still, as a young man who believed in obedience to authority, and in all old traditional systems, such as patronage and privilege, he had accepted the post without protest. It had made no difference to his consuming hatred of the Hun. When all his companions were pessimistic about final victory he had remained an optimist, because of his faith that the Huns must be destroyed, or God would be betrayed. When some of his colleagues who had lived in Germany before the war praised the German as a soldier and exonerated the German people from part at least of the guilt of their war lords, he tried to conceal his contempt for this folly (due to the mistaken generosity of the English character) and repeated his own creed of abhorrence for their race and character. "The only good German is a dead German," he said, a thousand times, to one's arguments pleading extenuating circumstances for German peasants,
