22 March, '17.

My dearest Lal:

Yesterday I went back to work on another of those “cage” things I was telling you about, a small one this time — cosy, two huts and everything fine — too fine in my opinion.

I am getting quite an expert at the wire entanglement business, and if any Fritz can get through the path I made, he’ll have to go some. In the evening, I had a most interesting conversation with Fritz. I rather hated to do it. He was wearing the Iron Cross Ribbon which he had won twice, and I couldn’t help thinking of the numbers of our men he must have killed to win it. I asked him if he had got it for killing Canadians. He was most pitifully emphatic in trying to convince me he had only been up against the French (of course). But what got me was his total inability to grasp the fact that this war could last over this Christmas, with a victory for Germany, of course. He told me it was a total and complete impossibility to take Bapaume. He was quite serious. He considers the war as won. So it is! I cannot understand it. If the German soldiers think like that, how can you blame the civilians? It would seem to me that any intelligent man, — and many of their prisoners seem very intelligent — could not help reading the signs, even from the narrow confines of a prison camp. Every man they see has victory written all over him. They couldn’t look up in the air at any time of the day, without seeing one of our aircraft coming or going in perfect peace. Our observation balloons are plain to see, all day. No one molests them. It would seem to me that this gross ignorance of the real condition is going to prolong the war more than anything else. . . .