a great deal has been said and written on the subject of the treatment of british prisoners of war, and the general idea at the present moment is one of a succession of unparalleled brutalities and insults. that much inhumanity has been shown it is neither possible nor desirable to deny, and it is only just that those responsible should have to give an account of their actions. but it must be borne in mind that though all the instances brought forward are perfectly true and authentic, propaganda aims not at the vraie vérité, but at the establishment of an argument; and the individual instances, which have formed the foundations of this conception of inhumanity, do not present a complete picture of captivity, and should not be taken as typical of every prison camp.{117}
of course one can only write about what one knows. baden-hessen is one of the more moderate provinces; and the treatment of officers is infinitely better than that of the men. but, speaking from my own experience, i can say with perfect sincerity that, from the moment when i was captured to the moment of release, i was not subjected to a single insult or a single act of brutality. i was treated with as much courtesy as i should have expected from a battalion orderly-room, and the discomforts and inconveniences of the journey were due in the main to faulty organisation. it sounds bad when one hears that a batch of prisoners were sent on a four days’ journey with rations for one day, but the corollary that the accompanying german sentries were provided with exactly the same amount of food casts a very different aspect on the case.
the starvation of prisoners has become almost an axiom, and indeed they were miserably underfed; but so was the entire{118} german people, and the custom of treating prisoners as well as civilians is confined to england. among all continental nations it is an understood thing that on the scale of diet the enemy should come last, and in germany there was only enough food for a bare existence.
in this respect, i believe, officers were much more fortunate than their men, and certainly they had the great advantage of a permanent address. for the men were being continually moved from one camp to another. at one time they would be working in the fields, at another in the salt mines, sometimes stopping for a couple of months, sometimes only for a few days. the result of this was that their parcels were trailing after them right across germany. at times they would go several months without one at all, and then if they had the luck to make somewhere a prolonged sojourn, they might receive thirteen parcels within three days. of course the men shared out their parcels as far as possible, but they were never{119} certain what was coming next, and they had many very hungry days.
with us there was none of that: we were in a permanent camp, and our parcels when once they had begun to arrive came through regularly. there were delays occasionally, especially when heavy fighting involved congestion of the railways; but eventually we received every parcel dispatched from a central committee. the only ones that did get lost were the home parcels that were sent privately. everything sent from the red cross committee, or from harrod’s or selfridge’s, arrived intact and in perfect condition.
as regards actual treatment, owing to the fact that officers were not made to work, there were very few occasions when physical violence was possible, cases of this sort generally occurring when men proved intractable in the factories. the only opportunities that were presented were when officers tried to get away, and the sentries availed themselves of these chances pretty generously.{120}
there were four or five attempted escapes, and on two of these occasions the officers were badly mauled by the sentries. the second time that this happened the german orderly officer put a stop to this treatment at once; but on the first occasion the officer stood by while the sentries belaboured their captive with the butts of their rifles.
the would-be monte cristos turned to the german officer and asked him if he considered such treatment proper for a british officer.
the german shrugged his shoulders. “oh, well,” he said, “you must expect this sort of thing if you try to escape. you ought to stop in your room.”
before, this particular german had always been especially agreeable to us. the only possible excuse for his behaviour lies in the fact that he was very fond of the bottle, and might have been a little drunk. but however one looks at it, it was a sufficiently discreditable affair.
of the insults and degradations to which the officers of the camp at holzminden were{121} subjected we had no experience. the germans adopted towards us an invariable attitude of respect that was if anything too suave. they were always profuse with promises, but it was very hard to get anything out of them.
“oh, yes,” they would say, “we can do that easily. we will go to the general and it will be all right. don’t worry any more about it. we’ll see to it, it will be quite simple.”
but nothing ever happened. the simplest request always managed to lose itself somewhere between the block office and the commandant’s study; and gradually we learnt that formal applications were no use whatsoever, and that if any one wished to change from one room to another, the surest way to get there was to collect all his baggage into a heap and move there independently.
the probable cause of this was the general himself, who was one of the most arrogant and pompous little men that militarism could produce. he was the complete prussian,{122} the prussian of the music-hall and the lyceum. very small and straight, he would strut about the parade-ground clanking his spurs, or else he would stand in a pose, his cloak pulled back to reveal his iron cross. and he was utterly vindictive. one does not wish to misjudge any human being, but i feel sure he must have derived an acute pleasure from sitting at his window and looking down on the court, his eyes hungry for some misdemeanour on our parts, in which he might possibly find an excuse for some punishment.
he was certainly given opportunities, and i think that considering the man he was, it would have been judicious to have approached him in a slightly different way. but it always happens that the majority have to suffer for the faults of a few thoughtless people, and several restrictions were placed on the camp that could have been easily avoided. in every community there is the rowdy section, and this rowdiness was accentuated by the lack of freedom. there{123} was no outlet for energy, except a walk round the square, or a very occasional game of hockey. and the spirits of the swashbucklers found expression in “rags” organised on an extensive scale.
but it was unfortunate for those who, having realised that they were prisoners, wished to make the best of their conditions. and really the rags were extraordinarily futile. one sportsman conceived the idea of lowering from the top-story windows dummies which the sentries would mistake for escaping britishers and fire at. luckily this scheme was suppressed, but there was nevertheless one night a very large and organised jollification, which was of course exactly what the general wanted.
for three weeks he closed the camp theatre, and put a stop to music and concerts of any description, which meant the removal of the only form of amusement that we had.
on another occasion when bombs were being dropped on mainz, a few officers began to cheer and shout. it was again playing{124} straight into the general’s hands. he immediately stopped for a period of two months all walks outside the camp, and any one who has been a prisoner will know what the curtailing of that privilege meant. it was a great pity, and our prison life would have been much more easy, if only the turbulent few had realised that it was in their own interests to keep quiet, considering the man with whom they had to deal.
though as a matter of fact i have little doubt that, however well we had behaved, the general would have found some excuse for inflicting reprisals. for he was quite capable of inventing regulations off his own bat. he was a sort of self-elected dictator, and drew up his own code and army act. his most scandalous infliction was an order that the covers should be removed from all books before being issued to the camp. the old excuse was brought forward; the french used to hide maps and poison between the cardboard and the cloth.
for this order the general had apparently{125} no authority whatsoever, and it was particularly unjust, because we had been precisely told at karlsruhe that all books must come direct from a publisher, so as to prevent any danger of their being tampered with. the result was that we had all sent home for new copies of books of which we already had soiled duplicates, and then when the books arrived, we found that they had to be practically cut to pieces.
they told us that the books could be kept for us if we liked, but naturally we did want to read them, now that they had come, and we had no other alternative but to authorise their execution; and surely for the true book-lover there can be no fate more awful than to have to stand in silence and watch book after book being barbarously mutilated.
occasionally we would try and save a volume. the bible was the centre of much controversy. there was no reason why it should be regarded as any more innocent than a swinburne as a possible receptacle for propaganda, but the censor did certainly{126} hesitate over it for a moment. but eventually he did not relent.
“no, i’m afraid it must go,” he said; “after all that god has put up with during the last four years, he ought to be able to survive this.”
it was the one flash of wit he showed, but it did little to save our covers. to all intents and purposes the books were ruined. the leaves began to turn up at the edges. after a book had been read three times, the glue at the back had cracked, and the pages gradually loosened. it was a sorry business; at least two hundred pounds’ worth of books must have been cut up within three months, and there was absolutely no authority for the order. this we discovered later on, when we managed to lodge a complaint before the central command at frankfort. they told us there that they had no objection at all to the issue of books with covers, and the restriction was instantly removed; but in the meantime no small part of a library had been destroyed.{127}
but our chief grievance was a medical one. the organisation of the camp was quite inadequate to meet the demands of any sudden epidemic. in ordinary times it certainly worked well enough. personally i never went to hospital, but a friend of mine who spent a week in the isolation hospital brought back a very favourable account of his treatment. the food was excellent, and the sister was particularly kind, going out of her way to do everything that lay within her power. but it was very different towards the end of the autumn, when the grippe was raging in the camp to such an extent that in the average room of eleven officers, there was hardly a day when less than four officers were in bed, and the arrangements were very poor. of course every allowance must be made for the fact that there was hardly any medicine in germany, and that when a disease had once started there, it was almost impossible to stop it. but the medical attendance was both ignorant and desultory. those cases{128} that were removed to the hospital were given, it is true, attendance as careful as they would have received in england. but in the camp the doctor appeared to take no interest in his work at all. very often he only visited the patients once every three days, and when he came he did not take much trouble with them. he used to ask a few casual questions and then say, “aspirin and tea.” the sick had to rely entirely on the other occupants of their room, and the help they received was willing but naturally ignorant. the result was that many officers became very seriously ill, and several of them died. the german organisation was in this case criminally inadequate.
