They were uhlans, two officers and six privates."
"It was very brave," I said. "A remarkable exploit."
"Very brave indeed," he agreed with me. "They are all very brave, the
Germans."
Captain F---- had been again consulting his map. Now he put it away.
"Brave but brutal," he said briefly. "I am of the Third Division. I
have watched the German advance protected by women and children. In
the fighting the civilians fell first. They had no weapons. It was
terrible. It is the German system," he went on, "which makes
everything of the end, and nothing at all of the means. It is seen in
the way they have sacrificed their own troops."
"They think you are equally brutal," I said. "The German soldiers
believe that they will have their eyes torn out if they are captured."
I cited a case I knew of, where a wounded German had hidden in the
inundation for five days rather than surrender to the horrors he
thought were waiting for him. When he was found and taken to a
hospital his long days in the water had brought on gangrene and he
could not be saved.
"They have been told that to make them fight more savagely," was the
comment. "What about the official German order for a campaign of
'frightfulness' in Belgium?"
And here, even while the car is crawling along toward the trenches,
perhaps it is allowable to explain the word "frightfulness," which now
so permeates the literature of the war.
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