“Kids are kids,” said a sergeant-major. “I don’t want to cut their throats! Queer, ain’t it?”

Many of the “kids” looked half starved. Our men gave them bread and biscuit and bully beef. In Cologne the people seemed pleased to see British soldiers. There was no sense of humiliation. No agony of grief at this foreign occupation. Was it lack of pride, cringing⁠—or a profound relief that the river of blood had ceased to flow and even a sense of protection against the revolutionary mob which had looted their houses before our entry? Almost every family had lost one son. Some of them two, three, even five sons, in that orgy of slaughter. They had paid a dreadful price for pride. Their ambition had been drowned in blood.