The special correspondent of the Times at the British Head-
quarters publishes in Tuesday's issue some curious stories of the humours of German surrenders :— " One Major who was taken said that he hoped he would be allowed to have his servant with him, as the servant was surrendering with the next batch ! Another German fell on his knees and offered his captor a 3-mark note if he would spare his life. ` And I hadn't the heart, when I took the note,' said his captor, ` to tell him that it wasn't worth threepence ! ' A batch of five prisoners pressed their watches in unison on the private to whom they surrendered."
The same kind of thing, the writer adds, occurs in almost every operation, for the German soldier " still believes that the British will kill him if he is captured, and still has a hazy notion that perhaps he can buy his life with such valuables as he has about him." The origin and maintenance of this belief are perhaps best accounted for in the letter found on a prisoner of the Thirteenth Corps. After recounting the terrible sufferings of the German soldiers in battle, he says " We have here real English in front of us now, and have orders to take no prisoners, but to despatch them all with the bayonet."
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