HUMAN LIFE 



German General Staff living at German 

 Great Headquarters in Occupied France. 



For several months, as chief representa 

 tive of Mr. Hoover s relief organization 

 in Occupied France I had to live, by the 

 convention of agreement between us and 

 the German government, at this Head 

 quarters, where all my activities could be 

 under the keen eyes of the German 

 General Staff. Out of this came my 

 special opportunity of hearing this argu 

 ment from important sources, for in such 

 forced close association we necessarily 

 came to a status of more or less frank 

 exchange of opinions. 



One of the Staff officers was in civil 

 life a professional biologist of much re 

 pute, a professor of zoology in one of the 

 larger German universities whom I had 

 known years before in student days in 

 Leipzig. Other officers of higher military 

 rank but less academic training expressed 

 in more brutal terms the same argument, 

 but the professor-officer s speeches were 

 the more plausible as he understood 



