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hospital, to see there the saddest spectacle the world affords, where anyone who is not deranged in his wits must lose all inclinations towards debauchery. In these chambers, spacious as churches, the beds stand in rows, in every one of them a wretched human creature waits in his own fashion for death, only a few for recovery. Here are a dozen who raise pitiful cries under the hands of the field-surgeon, here others writhe beneath their blankets like half-crushed worms, many with limbs rotted or rotting away. Usually we would stay there no longer than a few minutes, then we would go out into God's air and sit down upon a patch of grass. Then almost always our fancy would carry us back, whether we would or no, to our homeland of Switzerland, and we would tell one another of how we had lived at home, how happy we had been, how our life there was so free and here was so damnable, and so forth. Then we would make plans for our deliverance. At times we had hopes that today or tomorrow one of us might achieve it, at other times each saw before him as it were a mountain too high to scale, and above all things we were terrified at the thought of the consequences that would follow on an unsuccessful attempt.

Almost every week, indeed, we heard new and fearful tales of captured deserters, who, however great the cunning they had shown, disguising themselves as watermen or tradesmen, or even as women, or concealing themselves in casks or barrels, had yet been detected. Then we had to watch as they were made to run the gauntlet eight times up and down the long avenue of two hundred men, until they fell down breathless - and on the next day had to do it again, the clothes were torn from their mangled backs and the blows began afresh, until clots of blood hung down over their breeches. Then Schärer and I, pale and trembling, would look at one another and whisper: "The damned savages!" Besides this, the way things went on the drill-ground gave us cause for similar observations. There too we had no end of cursing and blows, from little Junkers who liked to wield the whip, and likewise no end of lamentations from their victims. We ourselves, indeed, were always among the first in our places, and exerted ourselves bravely. But it grieved us to the heart nonetheless, to see others so unmercifully mishandled for every trifle, and to picture ourselves so shamefully mistreated year upon year; standing, often for five hours at a time, laced up into our uniforms as tight as a nut, marching up and down poker-stiff, and continually practising the arms-drill as quick as lightning, and all this at the behest of an officer standing before us with a furious face and cane at the ready, and every moment threatening to cut us down like cabbage-stumps. Under this treatment even the strongest-nerved fellows among us grew weak and the meekest raged with anger. Then when we returned to our quarters, tired to death, the race was on again to put our linen to rights and abolish every speck of dirt, for save for the blue coat all our uniform was white. Our weapons, cartridge-pouches, sword-belts, every button on the uniform, all had to be cleaned until they shone like a mirror. If any man showed the least defect in any of these things, or if he had so much as a single hair out of place on his head, then when he came on parade he was greeted by a hard stroke of the whip.

This lasted for the whole of May and June. Even on Sundays we were not free, for then we had to be at our smartest for church parade. So there remained to us only a few scattered hours of leisure for our excursions, and in short we had no time for anything save enduring our hunger. As a matter of fact, at that very time our officers had received express orders to drill us hard and long, but we recruits knew devilish little of that, and simply supposed it to be the military manner of going about things. The old soldiers suspected something of the kind, but never let out a squeak about it.

By this time Schärer and I had become as poor as church mice and had sold everything but the clothes off our backs. We had to make do with bread and water, or kovent, which is not much better than water. Meanwhile I had left Zittemann and moved into another lodging with Wolfram and Meewis, the first-named was a carpenter and the second a shoemaker, and both were earning good money. At first I shared food with them as well. They ate like farmers: soup and meat with potatoes and peas. Each man contributed two dreiers for every meal. For breakfast and supper each fended for himself. I particularly relished a cow-heel, a herring or a small cheese. Now, however, I could not share with them, I had nothing more to sell, and most of my pay went on my washing, powder, shoe-polish, pipeclay, emery, oil and such etceteras. Now for the first

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