A COLONIAL'S OPINION OF FRITZ.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 13 February 1917, Page 3

A COLONIAL'S OPINION OF FRITZ.

.Writing to a friend in Wellington from Sling Camp, England, a member of B Company, First Battalion, New Zealand. Rifle Brigade, is anything but complimentary to the German soldier. "Unless I am a very bad judge," he writes, "The German soldiers are anxious to see an end to it all. There are some very brave and cruel men among them. Perhaps I should not use the word 'cruel,' as such a term has become unknown these barbarous times, but they have not got the British .heart or determination. They flocked in to us in batches of tens and fifteens, with hands raised appealing for mercy, which they sometimes received. You know a man that shoots at you and your comrades aud perhaps decimates half your section, and when you are within a dozen yards of him he throws his rifle away and with hands raised begs for mercy is an absolute hypocrite; the maximum length of the bayonet is too good for him. These sort of men are not considered as soldiers at all. I heard a Scotch officer lecturing one night, and he reck oned that the only good German was a dead one, and advised its, should we come across any. to wake them up and make them cough."