Perhaps the Germans are the only people in the world who celebrate Christmas more whole-heartedly than the British, and the iron relentlessness of the Potsdammers was unable to dictate conduct to the more loveable Southerners of Germany, especially the Saxons.
Accounts from all along the line show that wherever Prussians held the front, killing continued as usual, but the Saxons and other German troops observed a truce - and frequently themselves took the initiative - so that the day was spent by both sides fraternising with the enemy's troops between the trenches.
The rapprochement along the lines began differently in different places.
An artillery officer says that at 6 o'clock on Christmas Eve ''things went positively dead; there was not a sound. Even our own pet sniper went off duty.''
All evening the British officers sat round a fire, and about 11 o'clock a very excited infantry officer came in and said that all fighting was off; the men were fraternising in between the trenches.
Earlier in the evening they had heard the Germans calling out: "You English, why don't you come out?''
But wags in the British trenches had replied with cries of ''Waiter!''.
The report turned out to be true.
The soldiers on both sides had agreed that there should be no firing until midnight on Christmas Day, and there they were walking about unarmed far beyond their own trenches and entanglements.
Next morning the colonel and other officers ''came out to see the fun''.
British and Germans were digging graves together between the trenches to bury their dead.
It was agreed that if a single shot was fired it was not to be taken as an act of war, and an apology was to be accepted.
• A little adventure with an undeniably humorous side to it lay behind a case of drunkenness that was dealt with in the City Police Court yesterday morning.
The good luck that proverbially protects drunkenness seems rather to have deserted the two men concerned.
They were visitors to Dunedin, and, possibly in search of another place at which they might slake that thirst which grows by what it feeds on, they were so unlucky as to push their way in through the swing doors of the Central Police Station.
Once inside they separated.
One of them soon attracted the vigorous attention of a policeman, who ran him outside, and there gathered from him the information that he had a companion in misfortune in the police station.
The second man was not hard to find, and he too was taken outside, where he was promptly arrested for drunkenness in a public place and taken back inside.
The sequel was that a first offender was yesterday morning fined 5s, with the alternative of 24 hours' imprisonment for drunkenness.
• A North Otago woolgrower, whose flock is of merino breed, got a big surprise at the late Dunedin wool sales.
The major portion of his clip brought a half-penny more than was anticipated, and he felt on quite good terms with himself.
But he had four bales of black wool, which topped the price for his best merino by 2 1/2d, and sold at 4 1/4d above the broker's estimate.
It was an extraordinary figure, said the grower, who admitted that the fleeces were by no means first class in texture.
The demand for black wool is, at present, very keen. - ODT, 24.2.1915.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
