“A good boy that!  All his boys obey him and he obeys all the regulations.  But he acts as if we Germans were his prisoners.”

The British might not be good boys, but they would be clean.  They were diligent in the chase in their underclothes; their tents were free from odour; and there was something resolute about a Tommy who was bare to the waist in that freezing wind, making an effort at a bath.  I heard tales of Mr. Atkins’ characteristic thoughtlessness.  While the French took good care of their clothes and kept their tents neat, he was likely to sell his coat or his blanket if he got a chance in order to buy something that he liked to eat.  One Tommy who sat on his straw tick inside the tent was knitting.  When I asked him where he had learned to knit, he replied:  “India!” and gave me a look as much as to say, “Now pass on to the next cage.”

The British looked the most pallid of all, I thought.  They were not used to cabbage soup.  Their stomachs did not take hold of it, as one said; and they loathed the black bread.  No white bread and no jam!  Only when you have seen Mr. Atkins with a pot of jam and a loaf of white bread and some bacon frizzling near by can you realize the hardship which cabbage soup meant to that British regular who gets lavish rations of the kind he hkes along with his shilling a day for professional soldiering.

“You see, the boys go about as they please,” said our guide.  “They don’t have a bad time.  Three meals a day and nothing to do.”

Members of a laughing circle which included some British were taking turns at a kind of Russian blind man’s buff, which seemed to me about in keeping with the mental capacity of a prison camp.  “No French!” I remarked.

“The French keep to themselves, but they are good boys,” he replied.  “Maybe it is because we have only a few of them here.”

Every time one sounded the subject he was struck by the attitude of the Germans toward the French, not alone explained by the policy of the hour which hoped for a separate peace with France.  Perhaps it was best traceable to the Frenchman’s sense of amour propre, his philosophy, his politeness, or an indefinable quality in the grain of the man.

The Germans affected to look down on the French; yet there was something about the Frenchmen which the Germans had to respect—­ something not won by war.  I heard admiration for them at the same time as contempt for their red trousers and their unprepared-ness.  While we are in this avenue, German officers had respect for the dignity of British officers, the leisurely, easy quality of superiority which they preserved in any circumstances.  The qualities of a race come out in adversity no less than in prosperity.  Thus, their captors regarded the Russians as big, good-natured children.

“Yes, they play games and we give the English an English newspaper to read twice a week,” said our affable guide, unconscious, I think, of any irony in the remark.  For the paper was the Continental News, published in “the American language” for American visitors.  You make take it for granted that it did not exaggerate any success of the Allies.