It is true to say--utterly true--that all the prisoners we have taken this week, Prussians, Bavarians, Hamburgers, have lost all spirit for this fighting, hate it, loathe it as a devilish fate from which they have luckily escaped at last with life. Not one prisoner has said now that Germany will win on land. Their best hope is that the submarine campaign will force an early settlement. Their pockets are stuffed with letters from wives, sisters, and parents telling of starvation at home. It is not good literature for the spirit of an army. The prisoners themselves come to us starving. It is not because their rations in the trenches are insufficient. They are on short commons, but have enough for bodily strength. It is because our bombardment prevented all supplies from reaching them for three or four days. In one prisoners' enclosure, when our escort brought food, the men fought with each other like wild beasts, ravenous, and had to be separated by force and threats. The officers in charge of these prisoners' camps are overwhelmed by the masses of men. In one of them, where 4000 were gathered, they broke the barriers. A captain and subaltern of ours were alone to deal with this situation; but their own non-commissioned officers helped to restore order.
The position of the enemy now is full of uncertainty for him. It is possible that he will try to avoid any disaster by falling back farther to the Drocourt-Quéant line, and by slipping away farther north. The Hindenburg line is pierced, but he has established a series of switch-lines which will enable him to stand until our guns are ready again to make those positions untenable. The weather so far is in his favour, except that his troops are suffering as much as ours from cold and wet.
The capture of the Vimy Ridge by heroic assault of the Canadians and Scots, and their endurance in holding it under the enemy's heavy fire, have been followed swiftly by good results. Our troops have pushed forward to-day through Liévin, the long and straggling suburb of Lens, clearing street after street of German machine-gunners and rear-guard posts, and our patrols are on the outskirts of Lens itself, the great mining town, which is famous in France as the capital and centre of her northern mine-fields.