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Rh military law and disciplinary practice of the two countries, and to the personal characteristics of the two peoples. With regard to the former, it is not necessary to repeat what has been said before about the severity of the German military law, and in actual practice the officers and non-commissioned officers in the German army are accustomed, apparently without lawful authority, to ill-treat their men physically in a way which would not be tolerated in England. Moreover, the German is naturally more amenable to strict discipline than the average Briton. Much of the ill-treatment complained of in the camps resulted from one or other of the causes above indicated; for the rest a disregard of the German military law or the regulations made for carrying that law into force was the main contributing cause.

In this connexion the attitude of the civilian population cannot be ignored. The anger aroused by the entry of Great Britain into the war induced on the part of German men and even German women cruelties which any decent person must look upon with disgust. It was inevitable that the passage of wounded prisoners from the battle-front to the interior of Germany should be attended with suffering. But that men grievously injured should be subjected to insults and physical ill-treatment is horrible, and that women bearing the Red Cross should throw water on men crying in agony for a drink, or should show to famished men soup and then pour it on the ground rather than allow them to partake of it is conduct almost incredible in its brutality. But such things occurred, not once or twice, but frequently in the early months of the war, and even later the conduct of civilians outside the prisoners' camps is worthy of the severest condemnation. Happily, however, passions were allayed, and after the first year of the war prisoners passed through from the front without being subjected to the insults and ill-treatment which unhappily were common at first.

Again, it was inevitable that, owing to the state of unpreparedness and want of experience of all the belligerents, much discomfort and suffering should be caused to those captured early in the war. This is passed over as being practically unavoidable, and in what follows, unless otherwise clearly stated, the conditions recorded are those after the organization was or ought to have been fairly complete.

Officers.—The treatment of officers in a camp depended very much on the commandant, and, to some extent, on the personality of the general of the army corps district in which the camp was situated. As officers were under no obligation to work, one grievance which was so fruitful a cause of trouble in the men's camps did not exist in their case.

In some camps where, as at Crefeld, the commandant was a gentleman, no valid complaint can be made of the treatment. In others, especially in the X. Army Corps district, where the malign influence of Gen. von Hänisch was paramount, some of the commandants were neither gentlemen nor capable of understanding the feelings of gentlemen, and there was continual trouble. At Clausthal and Holzminden, of which the two brothers Niemeyer were commandants, the state of affairs was intolerable. There were continual arrests for trivial offences and endless pinpricks on both sides. But, worse than this, the guards had orders to use their bayonets and rifles without adequate cause. On one occasion an officer, for looking out of a window, was shot at by order of the commandant at Holzminden, but fortunately not hit. At Strohen, another camp in this district, two officers were seriously wounded in a bayonet charge ordered personally by the commandant because a knot of them had gathered near a prohibited part of the camp.

One matter gave rise to much resentment. It was right and proper for the Germans to make occasional strict searches in view of the continual attempts to escape; but their method of carrying them out with detectives from Berlin assisted by police dogs which prowled round the completely stripped officers was offensive in the extreme.

But these were exceptional places and incidents. In general, the officers commanding were gentlemen, who treated their charges with courtesy and consideration, though in most cases there was occasional friction owing to the propensity of the

young officers to attempt to escape, and, in some measure perhaps, owing to the inability of German officers to understand the exuberance—even in captivity—of British subalterns.

Men in the Main Camps.—In the main camps the treatment on the whole seems to have been reasonable, and in some cases more considerate than might have been expected. There was the usual trouble from the enforcement of a discipline far more severe than that to which the prisoners had been accustomed in their own army; from the violence with which the German non-commissioned officers treated offending prisoners, and, up to quite late in the war, from the use of savage police dogs in the camps, which the German Foreign Office declared to be “a military necessity, in view of the large number of prisoners of war in Germany,” adding that, “having regard to the inferior number of prisoners in England no comparison can be drawn between conditions in the two countries.” Trouble, and even loss of life, was caused by the too frequent use of firearms in some camps, as, for instance, at Wittenberg, where on one occasion men were ordered to return to their huts on a given signal and the laggards were fired on. But such incidents were not general, and occurred only in camps where the commandant was quite unfit for his post. In most cases the prisoners were treated fairly, if strictly; in a few, of which Friedrichsfelde may be taken as an example, at all events in its later stages, everything seems to have been done to make the prisoner's lot as little irksome and unpleasant as possible. An exception must be made in the case of Langensalza, where the treatment was from first to last rough in the extreme, a roughness which culminated just after the Armistice in the shooting by the guard, hurriedly called upon the scene, of a number of prisoners who were pulling down a building, a proceeding condemned by the German Court of Enquiry as a breach of Article 4 of the Hague Convention.

Working Camps.—Still leaving out of consideration the camps in the occupied districts on the eastern and western fronts, the great bulk of the ill-treatment occurred in the working camps, and by a curious paradox, it is in them that the best treatment is to be found. The ill-treatment was due to two main causes: first, to the fact that, except in very large working camps, the person in charge was a non-commissioned officer, and, second, to the passive resistance and in some cases the active insubordination of the British prisoners.

The non-commissioned officers, trained in the school of the German army and unrestrained by the presence of a superior officer, treated the prisoners in the way in which the rank and file of the German army have so often been treated. Men who refused to work, or in the opinion of the guards did not work hard enough, were kicked, spat upon, beaten with sticks, whips, clubs, rubber tubing, mining hammers and the butts of rifles. Those who escaped and were recaptured not infrequently received severe beatings before they were reported as recaptured and were formally punished for their offence. And all this was done notwithstanding the regulations, which, after laying down rules in the main reasonable enough for the use of arms by the guard, continue as follows (the quotation is from the instructions in force in the II. Army Corps district):—“Blows with the hand or fist or with sticks or clubs and kicks are forbidden. Except in the most exceptional and unusual cases it is inexcusable to lay hands on a prisoner.”

Even where the non-commissioned officer was lawfully inflicting punishment, he would often by his perverse ingenuity add to its severity. Men were made to stand at attention on hot asphalted roofs, or before coke ovens, where they were nearly roasted, or sometimes in exposed positions without an overcoat in the freezing atmosphere of a winter's night. At more than one mine, the dark cells, in which, according to the German law, prisoners of war under punishment were obliged to pass their periods of close arrest, were constructed in close proximity to the main steam pipe and became so hot that the men had to strip themselves almost to the skin.

For all this there is no excuse or palliation possible; happily, however, there is another side to record. At some large German works the employers seem to have taken a real interest in their