wmmmmm i asked one of them why he did not report a story he told me of an Eng lish lord and a German officer having lunch together in the English trenches on Christmas day a year ago. He replied that-his people didn't want such things to be printed. That is the way of it; a little touch of the human feeling and decency that is so badly needed on the mad continent is carefully covered up, and everything that breeds hate is blazon ed to the world. They don't stop with facts there are enough brutal facts. But they invent or twist anything they can that will stir men to kill one another. I was listening to a recital by, an old woman, proprietress of a cafe in. a little French village, of the brutal ity of the invading troops, when in came an old man who confirmed it all as an eye-witness. The woman fin ished her story with the exclamation "Sales Boches!" (French slang for "dirty Germans") when the old fel low protested, "Oh, but it was our boys what did it!" She angrily re plied, "Well, our boys started it, but' the sales Boches finished it!" I left them fighting it out between them. On a train between London and Liverpool I found three Englishmen, one a soldier, listening to -a. Belgian's story of atrocities. The Belgian had dramatic ability. "I saw it with my own eyes," he said, tapping the said eyes with his fingers. "Little chil dren, so high," and he passed his finger across his wrist to indicate the cutting off of a hand, "And women." He indicated a slash of a knife across the breast. Then followed the most blood curdling tale of brutality I have ever heard. His voice was a husky whis per and his eyes rolled wildly as he enlarged his tale. "Did you really see that yourself?" I asked. "Yes." "Where?" "In Belgium." "What part of Belgium?" "All around, lots of places." "When?" "Several .months ago." "How long were you there?" "Several months." "Where were you?" "In Antwerp." "How did you get there?" "On a ship. I am a sailor." "How long was the ship there?" "Oh, several weeks." "Did you come back on the same ship?" "Yes." "When did the ship sail?" "Oh, several weeks ago." "And you were in Antwerp all the time until the ship returned?" 'Yes." "Then I turned to the Englishmen and told them what had just been told me in Paris by my friend G , who had served eight months as an officer of the American relief commis sion in Belgium. He had had the privilege of moving where he pleased throughout Belgium and in northern France, back of the German lines, and he told me that he had tried to run down every atrocity story he heard. He said that he had never been able to find anything worse than the hugging of a woman by a soldier, in all the eight months he had been there. I also told my little audience of an other friend, representing a London newspaper, who had been sent by that journal among the Belgian re fugees at the beginning of the war for the express purpose of confirming atrocities. He had been unable to find one, and had been quietly recall ed by the paper. The dramatic Belgian's jaw drop ped as I told this, and when I as gen tly as possible asked him whether he hadn't read that story somewhere in stead of having really seen it, he didn't answer. Just as an English soldier told me, the Turks were awful fiends in Ar menia where he had never been, though all he had seen and fought in Gallipoli were decent fellows. And wounded Germans, recuperating in Switzerland, told me almost word for word the same hackneyed stories of the French that the French had told me of them. Yet the average, little anythine-to-