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 

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