IN GERMANY.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 January 1918, Page 6

IN GERMANY.

HOW GERMANY TREATS HER PRISONERS THE STORY OF A EUHLEBEN MURDER Professor F. Sefton Delmer, formerly lecutrer in English at the Berlin University, tells in the Nineteenth Century the story of his three years in Germany during the war. Professor Delmer is a Tasmanian. He married into a well-known family, and when war broke out automatically lost his lectureship and his liberty. 'After a period of mere surveillance having to report to the police twice daily cd was interned at the infamous camp at Kuhlebeu, until, broken in health, he was exchanged and sent to England. Those who scoff at German atrocities, and persist in regarding the reports as liberally unbelievable would •do well to read Mr Delmer’s cool, reasonable yet tragic story of his internment. We quote*a single episode: — '‘One of the most pitiful cases at Euhlebcn was that of John Bowditch, of Bristol, a stoker who had been taken at Hamburg early in August, and whose hard treatment on the hulks had brought on pneumonia. He was, when I saw him, just able to give me his wife’s name and address, and ask me to write to her. His food, a little black bread of the coarsest description and a cup of black coffee, lay uutouened beside him. Ho had no tatteudance except that of the other sick men in the ward for whom, in spite of their kindness, he was, especially in the night, a great trial. The poor fellow was evidently doomed, though good nursing could perhaps have saved him. On my way back to the camp on one of my daily visits,.! met the Herr Oberstabsartz, Dr. Reich. I accosted him, and Pegged him to have Bowditch removed to a proper hospital, if necessray at tne expense of the British Government. ‘Who tne devil arc you/ he demanded, with scowl.! told him. We have no hospital oeds and no ambulance to spare for such cases, and what's more, I’ll thank you in future to mind your own business. ’

‘I took some milk, biscuits, and such, light food as I could procure over to Bowditch ad managed to smuggle a card into Berlin to my wife asking her tu draw .the attention ox the American Bmbassy to this case and to the fact tnat there was an absolute lack of all medicaments and proper invalid nourisnmcnt in the so-called lazarette. Three days later John Bowditch died, and

when I went across thaa morning to the lazaretto, I found his Crimean shirt lying in the snow on the ground near tne door, waiting to be burned. One of the patients pointed out to me the clusters of lice with which it was covered. I shuddered to think that the poor fellow had evidently never had his shirt changed from the day he was taken prisoner in August to the day he died. I suppose he had been too weak to say a word to me about it.

i "As this was the first death in the camp, the Germans, who like their Kaiser, love theatricality and philanthropic posing above everything else, decided that the dead fireman should have an impressive funeral —at the expense of the British Goernment, of course. On the morning of the interment light snow had fallen. The 4500 men in camp were lined up in column of fours in, front of their arracks. The German officers and soldiers had donned parade uniforms and poor John Bowditch’s body in a fine coffin of polished oak, on a hcarsedrawn by two black horses, was driven into the camp where the German Kommandatur with his officers stood in all their glory. Beside them stood the doctor who had murdered this Englishman. All of them had their heels together and their hands raised to the salute in ostentatious homage to Death as the hearse was driven past them ! Then in long winding Dantcan lines wc prisoners filed by with bare heads. Ko one in camp guessed the irony and pity of it, for none of them had ever heard the name of this fireman, neglected and allowed to die ecausc he was a British sailor, and of that licc-clottcd shirt that had been burned in front of the lazaretto. ’ ’