At most of the stations we stopped at, men used to come into our carriage out of curiosity; some of them were rude and insulting, but very often they were eager to enter into conversation.
At one place an _Unterofficier_, who understood a little English but did not speak it, kept on repeating in German that England had made the War and tried to catch Germany unprepared, and that we were mobilised for war in July. I did not answer him, but turned round to the wounded soldier next me and said to him, "When did you mobilise?" All the men answered in chorus, "On the 5th August." "I don't know when you Germans mobilised," I said, "but you were fighting in Belgium on the day we mobilised."
In most of their conversations the question of who was going to win was not raised, for the Germans consider that they have won already, and they have no fears of being unable to maintain the territory they have conquered.
The prevailing sentiment towards England was contemptuous. I remember some soldiers at one place reading the news to my sentry out of a German paper, and one of the items was "Kitchener has organised an army of one million men." This statement caused considerable laughter, and when the sentry returned to our carriage I asked him where the joke lay. England, he then explained, for years had employed a small number of paid men to do whatever fighting was needed, and the nation could not now be drilled and made soldiers of, as they were not animated by the martial, manly spirit of Germany, and those few that did volunteer--he used the word with contempt--would require at least a year's training.
From such conversations as these, and from reading the German papers, I am convinced that the strongest ground of confidence the Germans possess is their contempt of England's military power. The Germans know far better than we do the weakness of our voluntary system. They know that if the full power of the British Empire was brought against them, defeat would in the long-run be inevitable. But they believe, and I think rightly believe, that this can never come to pass without organisation and discipline of the whole country. No disaster to the German arms on the field of battle would have an effect on the morale of the German people such as would result from the knowledge that the English had recognised the principle of National Service.