BETTER THAN FIGHTING.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1915, Page 3

BETTER THAN FIGHTING.

HOW GERMAN OFFICERS ARE TREATED. A BRITISH PRISON CAMP. By Cable.—Press Association —Copyright Received Dec. 20, 5.5 p.m. London, December 19. The New York Associated Press correspondent visited the officers' prison at Holyport, in Berkshire, formerly an Army preparatory school, containing 120 Army and Navy officers and 52 orderlies. The officers are compelled twice a week to proceed to an eightcen-acre playing field, containing football grounds and tennis courts. The field may be used daily for 2J hours, if desired. The field is located outside the prison's barbed-wire fence, and is surrounded by guards while the Germans are exercising. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Gladstone is in command of the'prison, but the discipline is left to .the Germans under the command of a senior officer, Commander Bochamer, who was second in command of the Gneisenau at the Falklands battle. The officers are left to their own devices within the school buildings, no British entering esjeept on occasional visits of inspection. Each officer receives a dollar a day and is allowed to arrange his own commissariat, the cost scarcely exceeding fifty cents a day. No prisoner has escaped, although a serious attempt by means of a tunnel was discovered, when a progress of eleven feet had been made, with sixty yards to go, but the tunnellers were not detected. The prisoners include Dr. Martin I.uthcr, the Emden's surgeon; some survivors of the Falklands battle; a few merchant marine and reserve men; also the first captive of the war, Captain Muhlbauer, who was in command of an East African liner, without wireless, which put into Malta to escape the Russians and was captured a few minutes after the news of England's declaration of war, and Herr Kolilsputter, who was astronomer at Mount Wilson Observatory in California.