sheaf of autumn asters from her garden to deck us with flowers.

What good people there are still in the world! And how greatly has the aggression of German savages reinforced those tender bonds of brotherhood that unite all who are truly of the human species.

IV

LETTER TO ENVER PASHA

Rochefort, September 4th, 1914.

My Dear and Great Friend,

Forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for yourself and of my regard for your country, which to some extent I have made my own. In the country round Tripoli you played the part of splendid hero, without fear and without reproach, holding your own, ten men against a thousand. In Thrace it was you who recovered Adrianople for Turkey, and this feat, the recapture of that town of heroes, you effected almost without bloodshed. Everywhere, with the violence necessitated by the circumstances, you suppressed cruelty and brigandage. I witnessed your indignation against the atrocities of the Bulgarians, and you yourself desired me to visit, in your service motor car, the ruins of those villages through which the assassins had passed.

Well, I will tell you a fact of which you are doubtless yet ignorant: In Belgium, in France, and moreover by order, the Germans are committing these same abominations which the Bulgarians committed in your country, and they are a thousand times more detestable still, for the Bulgarians were primitive mountaineers under the influence of fanaticism, whereas these others are civilised. Civilised? So fundamental is their brutality that culture has no grasp of their souls and nothing can be expected of them.

Turkey to-day desires to win back her islands; this point no one who is not blinded with prejudice can fail to understand. But I tremble lest she should go too far in this war. Alas! well do I divine the pressure that is brought to bear upon your dear country and yourself by that execrable being, the incarnation of all the vices of the Prussian race, ferocity, arrogance, and trickery. Doubtless he has seen good to take advantage of your fine and ardent patriotism, luring you on with illusive promises of revenge. Beware of his lies! Assuredly he has contrived to keep truth from reaching you, else would he have alienated your loyal soldier's heart. Even as he has convinced a section of his own people, so he has known how to persuade you that these butcheries were forced upon him. It is not so; they were planned long ago with devilish cynicism. He has succeeded in inspiring you with faith in his victories, though he knows, as to-day the whole world knows, that in the end the triumph will rest with us. And even if by some impossible chance we were to succumb for a time, nevertheless would Prussia and her dynasty of tigerish brutes remain nailed fast forever to the most shameful pillory in all the history of mankind.

How deeply should I suffer were I to see our dear Turkey, by this wretch, hurl herself in his train into a terrible venture. More painful still were it to witness her dishonour, should she associate herself with these ultimate barbarians in their attack upon civilisation. Oh, could you but know with what infinite loathing the whole world looks upon the Prussian race!

Alas! you owe no debt to France, that I know only too well. We lent our authority to Italy's attempt upon Tripoli. Later, in the beginning of the Balkan War, we forgot the age-long hospitality so generously offered to us Frenchmen, to our seminaries, to our culture, to our language, which you have almost made your own. In thoughtlessness and ignorance we sided with your neighbours, from whom our nation received naught but ill-will and persecution. We initiated against you a campaign of calumny, and only too late we have acknowledged its injustice. The Germans, on the other hand, were alone in affording you a little—oh, a very little!—encouragement. But even so, it is not worth your committing suicide for their sakes. Moreover, you see, in this very hour, these people are succeeding in putting themselves outside the pale of humanity. To march in their company would become not only a danger, but a degradation.

Your influence over your country is fully justified; may you hold her back on that fatal decline to which she seems committed. My letter will be long on the way, but when it arrives your eyes may perhaps be already opened, despite the web of lies in which Germany has entrammelled you. Forgive me if I wish to be of the number of those by whose means some hint of the truth may reach you.

I maintain an unwavering faith in our final triumph, but on the day of our deliverance how would my joy be veiled in mourning if my second country, my country of the Orient, were to bury itself under the débris of the hideous Empire of Prussia.

V

ANOTHER SCENE AT THE BATTLE FRONT

October, 1914.

Whereabouts, you may ask, did this come to pass? Well, it is one of the peculiarities of this war, that in spite of my familiarity with maps, and notwithstanding the excellence in detail of the plans which I carry about with me, I never know where I am. At any rate this certainly happened somewhere. I have, moreover, a sad conviction that it happened in France. I should so much have preferred it to have happened in Germany, for it was close up to the enemy's lines, under fire of their guns.

I had travelled by motor car since morning, and had passed through more towns, large and small, than I can count. I remember one scene in a village where I halted, a village which had certainly never before seen motor-omnibuses or throngs of soldiers and horses. Some fifty German prisoners were brought in. They were unshaven, unshorn, and highly unprepossessing. I will not flatter them by saying that they looked like savages, for true savages in the bush are seldom lacking either in distinction or grace of bearing. Such air as these Germans had was a blackguard air of doltish ugliness—dull, gross, incurable.

A pretty girl of somewhat doubtful character, with feathers in her hat, who had taken up a position there to watch them go past, stared at them with ill-concealed resentment.

"Oh indeed, is it with freaks like those that their dirty Kaiser invites us to breed for beauty? God's truth!" and she clinched her unfinished phrase by spitting on the ground.

For the next hour or two I passed through a deserted countryside, woods in autumn colouring and leafless forests which seemed interminable under a gloomy sky. It was cold, with that bitter, penetrating chill which we hardly know in my home in south-west France, and which seemed characteristic of northern lands.

From time to time a village through which the barbarians had passed displayed to us its ruins, charred and blackened by fire. Here and there by the wayside lay little grave-mounds, either singly or grouped together—mounds lately dug; a few leaves had been scattered above them and a cross made of two sticks. Soldiers, their names now for ever forgotten, had fallen there exhausted and had breathed their last with none to help them.

We scarcely noticed them, for we raced along with ever-increasing speed, because the night of late October was already