My Three Years in a German Prison

During the years 1916 and 1917, and for the first part of 1918, Germany possessed one god and one idol. The god was Emperor William and the idol was Hindenburg. It will be remem...

I had enjoyed for two days the charming hospitality of Holland when I was invited to visit the British General Consulate at Rotterdam. The previous day I was at The Hague, where...

One of the interned cases which is likely to be heard of is that of Mr. Hintermann, a subject of Switzerland. In referring to the case in the course of a narrative of this kind...

To properly understand the German mentality one must turn to the country’s military history. Germany–that is, Prussia and her forty millions of people; a few smaller kingdoms su...

During the three years of my captivity in the jail at Berlin I frequently had occasion to exercise my profession as a medical doctor. Medical care was supposed to be given to th...

The manner in which war prisoners and interned civilians were fed and treated in Germany gave rise, as we all know, to bitter complaints and more bitter controversies in the new...

Among the interesting prisoners I knew in the Stadtvogtei during my long captivity there are several who deserve special mention. Early in 1916 there were frequently heard proce...

One cannot but look forward with feelings of deep emotion to the moment when he will leave a prison where he has been detained for three years and where he has made sincere and...

In prison life one question looms up every day before many of the prisoners. It is that of possible escape. During the three years I spent in the Stadtvogtei several escapes too...

During seven weeks’ sojourn in this charming little country of Holland, in the course of the many walks I took along the countryside, in the woods and parks, my thoughts reverte...

One can readily realize that a journey to Antwerp under the escort of a German soldier had rather humiliated me. I wrote a letter of protest to Major Von Wilm, relating all the...

A few weeks after entering prison I was called into the office on the ground floor, where I found myself face to face with a person entirely unknown to me.

I had been in prison then for two years, seeing nothing outside but the sky and a wall pierced by some fifty iron-barred windows. For two short hours, one year before, as stated...

In a preceding chapter, I referred to an officer at the Kommandantur by the name of Wolff. He was a German Jew who could “give points” to Prussians! He displayed a large number...

Divers histories of the war, published in French and English since 1914, have reported the principal phases and details of the memorable event. I will confine myself then to cer...

Military police inspection at this period became much more stringent. If one were walking along the street, or visiting a neighbor, or making a sick call, he was liable to be ke...

Friday, October 9, 1914, was a day of anxiety and fear for the city of Antwerp and the villages situated inside the fortified position. The Germans were within our midst, and fr...

April 19, 1918, will ever remain a memorable date for me. I had just received a request to present myself at the Kommandantur, and a non-commissioned officer was waiting on the...

It was the 26th of July, 1914. My wife and I were walking leisurely in the park of a village in the Pyrenees, the sun shedding its warm, quickening rays in the Valley of the Gav...

That section of the Stadtvogtei wherein I was confined could give shelter to two hundred and fifty prisoners in about one hundred and fifty cells. Some of the cells contained as...

The names of two prisoners, Maclinks and Kirkpatrick, recall to my mind one of the most tragic events of my prison life. Maclinks was already in the Berlin jail when I arrived i...

We were in front of the Stadtvogtei. It is a prison well-known in Germany. In times of peace it lodges persons who are awaiting trial before the Court of Assizes, and to it poli...

On the morning of October 10, at about 9 o’clock, a messenger called at our house and, on behalf of a group of citizens, invited me to the City Hall. I was at a loss to know why...

It is unnecessary for me, I think, to insist here upon the patriotism displayed by the Belgian nation. All classes of the population, rich and poor, young and old, of all ages a...

What a touching spectacle–that of a whole people fleeing to another country! This sight we witnessed in all its tragic pathos. While the Germans approached from the east and sou...

It was a young lady who thus addressed us on the sidewalk midway between the church and the chateau. My wife and I were returning from church when we were thus apprised that the...

It was in the month of May, 1916. I had then been a prisoner at the Stadtvogtei for one year. Repeated requests made by myself, through the American Embassy, and made on my beha...

Towards the end of October, 1914, two or three weeks after the evacuation of the fortress of Antwerp, His Eminence Cardinal Mercier issued a pastoral letter to his clergy and pe...

Early in February, 1915, my wife and I went to Antwerp, and called at the Central Office for the issuing of safe-conducts (passports). We submitted to the two officers in charge...

We had left Middelkerke, “armes et bagages,” as we say in French. When I say arms and baggage it is a mere figure of speech, as our fowling-guns had been confiscated by the muni...

Overcome by the tidings of what was to be my fate I had no inclination for lunch before I left Antwerp. In the evening I was seized by the pangs of hunger, and as there was a di...

Great agitation reigned on the beach at Middelkerke on August 3, 1914. The newspapers had just published the text of the Kaiser’s ultimatum to the Belgian Government. The indign...