Cloudy day with thunder showers.

Germans are being beaten back. They are frustrated in their efforts to drive a wedge of their army between us & the French. We have driven them back 10 miles. Today, for the first time there appears in the paper a mention of the Russian troops in France. Everyone has been talking of it, but the papers had been bound to secrecy & even now the extract was copied from a station paper, so wonderfully is Lord Kitchener managing everything.

M & I went to lunch at Holwell, & then on to the class. Several recruits were standing outside the headquarters, the numbers are increasing rapidly. The young men of England are at last waking up.

In the paper to day is an account supposed to be given by the Belgian treasurer of Louvain of the sack of that town. The most awfully treacherous & cruel proceeding, worthy of Napoleon. If only the German Emperor & his military advisers could be caught & sent to St Helena or Ascension Island & kept there until they die.