Chapter 27

OBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS

EMPLOYMENT OF PRISONERS. PARCELS. MEN OF MONS

When I first became aware that there was a probability of my being exchanged I set to work to gather what information I could.

I came into contact with a good many private soldiers, and in conversation with them I became deeply interested in the commercial value of prisoners of war; for it appeared to me clearly evident that in a country where there were over a million prisoners, possibilities were unlimited; and the German authorities appeared, with businesslike organisation, to be taking the fullest advantage of their opportunities.

The unprecedented scale upon which prisoners have been made during the present war has opened up a problem unique in the annals of history. The more prisoners you take the more mouths you have to feed; and the greater becomes the man power necessary for their supervision.

With the ever-increasing number of prisoners the problem grows in enormity, and can either develop into embarrassing proportions, or by scientific handling can be turned to advantage.

In England for over two years we have herded our prisoners behind bayonets and barbed wire. The financial resources of the country have been poured out to feed idle hands, supplying food without repayment, at a time when the food and labour problems of the nation are becoming its most serious problems.

For over two years we have allowed the question to slide into obscurity, until to-day in our own country the only part of the community which has no anxiety or participation in the problem of living and daily sustenance is the German prisoner in our midst; and yet to-day a large part of what should be our fighting power is kept from the firing-line to supply the needs of the nation and feed the mouths of our idle prisoners.

It has never occurred to us, or if it has we have ignored it, that without contravening the law of nations, prisoners can be made to feed themselves, and be employed in any industry, provided they are not put to work connected with the war.

It has never occurred to us that we have in our midst many of the trade secrets of a country which for generations has been our rival in commerce.

It has never occurred to us that Germany has in her midst men who hold the trade secrets of our empire, and is learning them day by day by the employment of our men in her industries.

If we neglect this problem any longer we may find that when the world resumes its normal trade activity Germany, on this point at any rate, will have scored a commercial victory.

The nations of the world are at war. But the armies of to-day are civilian armies, comprising men of industrial and commercial education, and the prisoners of to-day are men of commercial and industrial value.

Our adversaries have been quick to recognise this. We seem to be still imbued with the idea that the German soldier in our midst is simply a fighting machine!

So he is. But when the time came for the civilian to take up arms and supplement the professional fighting force, there fell into our hands an industrial fighting machine in the guise of a military prisoner.

We have the impression that a military prisoner is an individual whose one desire is to escape and jump at our throats; and that the safety of the nation compels us to stand over him with a bayonet and regard his every movement with suspicion.

Yes, I do not deny that a very large number of prisoners in our midst would be glad to get back to their homeland, especially if there was no further prospect of having to face the British in the firing-line. But keep a man idle for months behind barbed wire, like an animal in a cage, and you encourage his desire to escape far more than if you diverted his mind by industrial employment.

Have we not a barbed wire supplied by nature completely surrounding our country? Are we not on an island?

I had many opportunities of talking with our men in Germany and of gaining information as to the manner in which the German authorities were taking advantage of the problem we avoid, or occupy our time in idle discussion.

I will take one concrete example. In Hameln Lager the commandant has charge of 50,000 prisoners, of which 30,000 are "living out"! They are working out in commandos on the farms, in the factories, in the workshops; in large batches, small batches, and even singly.

I met one man who had been employed alone in a wheelwright's shop. He was a wheelwright by trade. How many wheelwrights' shops are there in England which could do to-day with one of the wheelwrights we are keeping idle behind barbed wire?

What information did that man's employer gain by the way the work was done? How simple the method of obtaining the labour: simply go to the labour bureau attached to the imprisonment camp nearest to your workshop, and ask for a wheelwright. You keep your industry going, and thus in the only practical way keep open the job for the man who is called to the colours.

The employer pays the man no wages, but the local trade-union rate of wage is paid to the commandant who supplies him. Thirty thousand prisoners from a single camp contributing to the industry of the nation, and the wages of 30,000 prisoners contributing to the cost of the war. The prisoner receives through the commandant 30 pfennigs (3d.) per day, and is glad of the employment.

A very large number of prisoners are employed as agricultural labourers, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that all the food supplied to the prisoners, such as it is, is grown by prisoner labour.

I was told by men who had worked on farms that they were compelled to work from 4 in the morning until 9 at night. In some cases only one or two were employed on small farms.

I asked those men why they did not embrace the opportunity to make their escape. But they said that while the work was hard they preferred it; as they lived with the farmer, who treated them well if they worked well. They ate at the farmer's table, and had no non-commissioned officers to bully them; whereas, if they attempted to escape and were caught they would be sent to work in the mines or other equally unpopular task.

Large numbers are employed in the sugar-refineries, coal-mines, and salt-mines, the latter task being the most dreaded; for with the food they were given their health broke down within a few months.

The English prisoner said that when the party he was with first arrived at the mine and saw what they had to do they refused to work. Their guard thereupon threatened them, and when they still refused they were taken outside one by one, and the remainder would hear a shot fired, and then another would be taken out.

It was a fake. The men could not be intimidated, and they were sent back to the Lager.

It was on another occasion that the man I am referring to was put to work in the mine.

I was asked by another if I knew anything about 200 German prisoners being sent back to work in France, because they were not allowed to work in England. He said that when the Germans heard about it they took 200 of our men from Doberitz camp and sent them to work in Poland as a reprisal.

The work there may not have been very much harder, but it was a great hardship upon our men, because there would be a considerable delay in their parcels of food reaching them from England, and meantime they had to subsist on the scanty fare supplied by their captors.

The men seemed to be getting parcels on a very liberal scale. Some were getting more than others, but they divided up by eating in messes of four or six, or some such number.

I did not hear of many complaints of parcels being undelivered, though in some cases parcels were missed. But so far as I could ascertain they were not withheld in any deliberate or systematic manner; and when one comes to consider the enormous number handled and the probability of parcels getting lost through insecure packing, the number of complaints I heard of seemed comparatively insignificant.

The Russian prisoners seemed to be the least provided for, and parcels for them were very rare. They lived or rather starved on the German rations; and when men have to work or remain in the open air all day such a ration was a form of torture.

When the watery liquid of potato water called soup was issued from the kitchens fatigue parties were paraded to draw the issue for each mess.

The British prisoners were not altogether dependent on this ration, and would let the Russian prisoners carry the dixy for them, and in return they would be given a cup of soup by the British Tommies. So hungry were the Russians for this little "extra" that hundreds of them would wait for hours in the cold on the off-chance of a few getting the job.

One cannot speak with these British Tommies and hear of their hardships without feeling a profound admiration for their indomitable spirit. You can take a British soldier prisoner, send him far from the protection of his country, but he is British wherever he goes and his courage and resourcefulness cannot be broken.

Whenever I met a man who had been a prisoner since the beginning of the war, I made a point of getting his story to ascertain the truth about the barbarities I had read of.

There was no mistaking these men. I could not see them but I seemed instinctively to recognise, and whether it was my imagination or not I cannot tell; but their manner seemed distinctive and they spoke like men who had suffered much and were harbouring a just grievance, and lived for the day when they would revenge themselves. As one man put it to me:

"If we ever see a German in England when we get back we will kill him."

These men were taken at Mons; captured, most of them, by sacrificing themselves in rear-guard fighting to save the main British army.

These men have been in captivity for two and a half years. Just think of it! But do we think of it enough, or have we forgotten it?

The British Tommy has an individuality which is not always understood. Ask him in an official way to give evidence of his treatment, and he will sit tight and say not a word. Take out your note-book to write down his evidence and he can think of nothing, but all the same he knows a lot.

I know this to be true; for after I was exchanged I spoke to a soldier who had been exchanged at the same time, and he said that a Government official had been round to question the men on the treatment they had received in Germany. During our conversation he told me that 200 of our men had been put to work in a Zeppelin factory. I asked him if he had given this in evidence, but he said:

"No, not likely; they got nothing out of me."

I asked him why not, for it was his duty. But he said they would only have asked him a lot more questions to try and tie him up in a knot.

When I came across a soldier who was captured at the beginning of the war I used to invite him to my room when no one was about. We would sit in front of the fire and drink a cup of cocoa and smoke a pipe.

I never asked him questions, but let him talk as he felt like it. There were generally one or two others in the room, and when we began to feel we knew each other and were chums together in adversity, he would tell his story in his own way.

I met these men in Hanover Hospital, Osnabruck camp, and Blenhorst camp. I will not publish their names for fear of paining their relatives; but I have their names and the names of witnesses who heard the stories, which I will relate in my next chapter.