During the day we were permitted to stretch our limbs in the exercise yard for about fifteen minutes.  No steel-bound rules and regulations such as I had experienced at Wesel prevailed here.  We were free to intermingle and to converse as we pleased.  This relaxation was keenly anticipated and enjoyed because it gave us the opportunity to exchange reminiscences.  We learned enough during this brief period to provide material for further topics of conversation.  This, however, was the experience of our party.  Others fared worse and were shut up in single cells in which, as I had previously done at Wesel, they were compelled to pace.

We only shared the large underground cell together at night because of its sleeping accommodation.  We were shut in separate cells during the day, which prevented interchange of conversation and inter-amusement during the day except in the exercise yard.  But solitary confinement was rare, and in the majority of cases we learned that the aliens were placed in small parties of four or five in a single cell.  After a few days our party was swelled by five new arrivals from different parts of Germany.  We were a cosmopolitan crowd, comprising every strata of society, from wealthy men down to stable lads.  One boisterous spirit, a Cockney, confessed far and wide that he had once suffered imprisonment at home for horse-stealing, and he did not care a rap for anything or anybody.  He was always bubbling over with exuberant merriment and was one of those who can project every situation into its relative humorous perspective.  Another prisoner was an Englishman who had been resident in Germany for twenty-five years, and at the time of his arrest occupied a very prominent position in one of the foremost banking institutions.

This man felt his humiliation acutely.  He paced his cell from morning to night, peevish and nervous, brooding deeply over what he considered to be an atrocity.  He was a well-known man and on intimate terms with many of the foremost members of the Government and of the Services.  He wrote to every man whom he thought capable of exerting powerful and irresistible influence upon his behalf, but without any tangible results.  The fact that this man, apparently more Teuton, from his long residence and associations in the country, than British, had been thrown into prison brought home to us the thorough manner in which the Germans carried out their task of placing all aliens in safety.  It was immaterial how prominent the position of the Britisher, his wealth, or his indispensability to the concern with which he was identified.  Into prison he went when the general rounding up of enemies order was promulgated.

The Cockney who had been imprisoned for horse-stealing badgered this superior fellow-prisoner unmercifully.  He was incessantly dwelling upon the man’s descent from a position of comfort and ease to “quod” as he termed it.  He would go up to the prisoner, pacing the exercise yard, and slapping him on the back would yap: