“He helped us a lot—­this man!” said the commandant, and laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder.  The Frenchman’s eyes dilated a trifle and a smile flashed behind rather than across his face—­one could not know whether it was gratitude or defiance.

A sculptor who had won a prize at Rome and several other artists had had a room set aside for them to work in.  Some were making post-cards, some more ambitious drawings, and in the sculptor’s studio was the head of the young doctor we had just seen and an unfinished plaster group for a camp monument.  On the wall was a sign in Latin and French—­“Unhappy the spirit which worries about the future,” a facetious warning that any one who loafed there longer than three minutes was likely to be killed, and the following artistic creed from “La Fontaine:” 

“Ne for fans point noire talent.  Nous ne ferions rien avec grace.  Jamais un lourdaud quoiqu’il fosse, ne saurait passer pour gallant.”

("Don’t strain your talent or you’ll do nothing gracefully.  The boor won’t pass for a gallant gentleman, no matter what he does.”)

The Germans, at different times in their history, have conquered the French and humbly looked up to and imitated them.  Generally speaking, they study and try to understand the French, and their own intellectuality and idealism are things French-men might be expected to like or, at any rate, be interested in.  Yet it is one of history’s or geography’s ironies that the Frenchman goes on his way, neither knowing nor wanting to know the blond beasts over the Rhine—­“Jamais un lourdaud quoiqu’il fasse” . . the young sculptor must have smiled when he tacked that verse on the wall of his prison!

Ruhleben is a race-track on the outskirts of Berlin, and a detention camp for English civilians.  This is quite another sort of menagerie.  You can imagine the different kinds of Englishmen who would be caught in Germany by the storm—­luxurious invalids taking the waters at Baden-Baden; Gold Coast negro roust-abouts from rusty British tramps at Hamburg; agents, manufacturers, professors, librarians, officers from Channel boats, students of music and philosophy.

All these luckless civilians—­four thousand of them—­had been herded together in the stables, paddock, and stands of the Ruhleben track.  The place was not as suited for a prison as the high land of Zossen, the stalls with their four bunks were dismal enough, and the lofts overhead, with little light and ventilation, still worse.

Some had suffered, semi-invalids, for instance, unable to get along with the prison rations, but the interesting thing about Ruhleben was not its discomfort, but the remarkable fashion in which the prisoners had contrived to make the best of a bad matter.

The musicians had their instruments sent in and organized an orchestra.  The professors began to lecture and teach until now there was a sort of university, with some fifty different classes in the long room under the grand stand.  And on the evening when we had the privilege of visiting Ruhleben it was to see a dramatic society present Bernard Shaw’s “Androcles and the Lion.”