The camp government also embarked upon trading operations.  Shops were erected, one or two at a time, until at last we had a row of emporiums.  The requisite material was bought from the Germans or from home with money drawn from the camp treasury.  It must not be forgotten that the Teuton authorities resolutely refused to supply us with a single thing, declined to participate in any improvements, and refused to contribute a penny to defray the cost of any enterprise which was considered imperative to ameliorate our conditions.  Indeed they robbed us right and left, as I will narrate later.  By building shops in this manner we were able to boast a Bond Street, from which in a short time radiated other thoroughfares which were similarly christened after the fashionable streets of London—­we had a strange penchant for the West-End when it came to naming our streets.  The result is that to-day Ruhleben can point to its Fleet Street, its Trafalgar Square, and so on.

Goods were purchased for the various departments according to the specialities of the shops—­boots for the bootshop, clothes for the clothiers and groceries for the provision stores.  The communal government selected competent men to take charge of these establishments at a weekly salary of five shillings.  Every shop in the camp, with the exception of a very few, such as mine in which I specialised in engraving, the ticket-writers and so forth, belonged to the community and were run by the community for the benefit of the community.  No prisoner was permitted to launch out upon his own account as a shopkeeper if he intended to deal in a necessity.  Only those trades which involved no stock or might be described as luxuries were permitted to be under individual management for individual profit.

As the inter-trading in the camp developed we were able to purchase large stocks of essentials, and it was astonishing to observe the prosperity with which our trading endeavours flourished.  Great Britain has always been contemptuously described by our commercial rivals as a nation of shop-keepers, and in Ruhleben Camp we offered our German authorities, right under their very noses, the most powerful illustration of this national characteristic, and brought home to them very conclusively the fact that our national trait is no empty claim.  Thousands of pounds sterling were passed over the counters every week.

While the shops dealt only in what might be termed necessities for our welfare, we were able to procure almost any article we desired.  A “Special Order Department” was created to which we took our orders for special articles not stocked in the camp.  If the order, upon scrutiny by the authorities, was deemed to be reasonable and did not infringe the prohibited list, the arrival of the goods in due course was certain.