It is common knowledge throughout the German Empire that the most loathsome tasks of the war in connection, with every camp or cage are given to the British.  They have had to clean the latrines of negro prisoners, and were in some cases forced to work with implements which would make their task the more disgusting.  One man told me that his lunch was served to him where he was working, and when he protested he was told to eat it there, or go without.

Conversations that I have had here in London about prisoners give me the impression that the British public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner stands for in German eyes.

First, he is a hostage.  If he be an officer his exact social value is estimated by the authorities in Berlin, who have a complete card index of all their officer prisoners, showing to what British families they belong and whether they have social or political connections in Britain.  Thus when someone in England mistakenly, and before sufficient German prisoners were in their hands, treated certain submarine marauders differently from other prisoners, the German Government speedily referred to this card-index, picked out a number of officers with connections in the House of Lords and House of Commons, and treated them as convicts.

The other German view of the prisoner is his cash value as a labourer.  I invite my readers to realise the enormous pecuniary worth of the two million prisoner slaves now reclaiming swamps, tilling the soil, building roads and railways, and working in factories for their German taskmasters.

The most numerous body of prisoners in Germany are the Russians.  They are to be seen everywhere.  In some cases they have greater freedom than any other prisoners, and often, in isolated cases, travel unguarded by rail or tramway to and from their work.  If they are not provided with good Russian uniforms, in which, of course, they would not be able to escape, they are made conspicuous by a wide stripe down the trouser or on the back.  They are easy, docile, physically strong, and accustomed to a lower grade of food than any other prisoners, except the Serbs.

The British, of course, are much the smallest number in Germany, but much the most highly prized for hate propaganda purposes.

“More difficult to manage,” said one Unteroffizier to me, “than the whole of the rest of our two million.”  It is, indeed, a fact that the 30,000 British prisoners, though the worst treated, are the gayest, most outspoken, and rebellious against tyranny of the whole collection.

There is, however, a brighter side to prison life in Germany, I am happy to record.  A number of really excellent camps have been arranged to which neutral visitors are taken.  When I told the German Foreign Office that I would like to see the good side of prison life, I was given permission by the Kriegsministerium (War Office) to visit the great camp at Soltau, with its 31,000 inmates with Halil Halid Bey (formerly Turkish Consul in Berlin) and Herr Muller (interested in Germany’s Far Eastern developments).