TWO:"'I saw how two to three hundred German soldiers, part of them slightly wounded, who were well able to walk, partly soldiers of the Landen garrison, who crowded about the open doors of one of the last wagons, raging and jeering against three seriously wounded British soldiers, about whom their French fellow-passengers told me that they had had nothing to eat for five days. The wounded were called "swine," were spit at, and some rifles were aimed at them. When I told a sergeant that it was a disgusting scene, he answered: "These British swine, they get paid for their filthy work." He alluded to the pay which the British volunteers receive because they enlist as mercenaries, Britain having no compulsory general military service. Before I witnessed this awful thing at Landen, Germans in the train had already told me that they simply killed any British whom they made prisoners. Others said that such a thing did not happen in their division, but one man contended that by his company already twenty-six had been killed. I did not believe them, and thought that they were better than they pretended to be.But now all is changed: natural phenomena have been explained as being but the operation of regular laws; so has mechanical manipulation been explained as consisting in the application of general principles, not yet fully understood, but far enough, so that the apprentice may with a substantial education, good reasoning powers, and determined effort, force his way where once it had to be begged. The amount of special knowledge in mechanical manipulation, that which is irregular and modified by special conditions, is continually growing less as generalisation and improvement go on.
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