The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1916. BRITISH PRISONERS IN GERMANY.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 December 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1916. BRITISH PRISONERS IN GERMANY.

Jn the October and November issues of The Times Weekly edition appear articles from the pen of an American writer, D. Thomas Curtis, who was commissioned by the proprietor, Lord,Northclift'e, to go into Germany and remain there and study the conditions for a .year it" necessary. His revelations throw a strong light upon the conditions existing in the enemy, country. One of the most difficult of his tasks was to find out what was happening to the 30-000 British soldiers and 4000 civilians iu captivity. The German policy he tells us, is to show the British prisoners to as many people as possible, and as a result they have been scattered into at least 000 prison camps. They are constantly being moved about. They are conveyed ostentatiously and shown at railway stations, en route where until recently they were allowed to be spat upon by the public, and were given coffee into which the public were allowed to spit. These are but a lew of the slights and abominations heaped upon them. Much of .t is quite unprintable. It is common knowledge throughout the German Empire that thu most | loathsome tasks of the war in connection with every camp or cage are given to the Englisn. Conversation that the neutral observer had iu London about

oui prisoners gave him the impression ciiai the Britisu public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner stands tor m German eyes. First, he is a hostage. If lie be an officer his exact social value .s estimated by the authorities In Ber•m, 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 Mtinections in England. Tims when someone in England mistakenly, and beiore she had sufficient German prisoners in her hands, treated certain submarine Marauders differently from other prisoners, the German Government speedily 'eferr'ed to this card-index, picked out t number of oflicers with connections in the House of Lords and House of Commons and treated them as convicts. N'ow that the British have in their hands a great number of officers, some Jf them of distinguished German families, and also with Royal and political influence, she can get better terms for her officer prisoners by the application of ordinary common senSe in dealing with the German authorities. The other German view of the prisoner is his cash vtlue as a laborer. The writer invites 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 the German taskmasters. Some military writers leave these prisoners out of their calculations ■ hen estimating Germany's man-power, .'he writer points out we had two million prisoners we would probably be able to release two million of our own people for military service. The most numerous body of prisoners in Germany are the Russians, says the writer. They u'e to be seen everywhere. They hare greater ireedom than any other prisoners, and travel unguarded in many cases 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 '>aek. They are easy, docile, physically strong, and accustomed to a lower grade of food than any other prisoners, except the Serbs. The English, of course, are nucb. the smallest number in Germany, but much the most highly prized for >ate propaganda purposes. '-'More difticult to manage," said one 'Unter-officcr "than the whole of We rest of our two To this Lord NortireliftVs "gent rejoins: ,; It is, indeed, a fact that the British 30,000 prisoners, though ■the worst treated, are the gayest, most outspoken, and rebellious against tyranny of the whole collection." Since the Germans began to find the war going against them, since, in. particular, the English and French made large captures of Prussian Guards and other corns d'elite soldiery, a number of really O. JW. , : £T:Z ~—■■ >,,.-...« L

excellent camps have been arranged to which neutral visitors are taken. The writer's conviction is that now we have

a baiance ot German pri-oners Germany ..ill, for fear ol reprisal*, treat our men

better than in the past. This view is borne out in an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung dealing in a tone of unctuous self satisfaction with the treatment by Germany of their almost two million captives. The world does not 'iced reminders such as that of Wittenberg to know what has happened to Eng.ish prisoners in Germany. A special cruelty of the Germans towards the

prisoners is the provision of a lying newspaper in French for the Frenchmen, called the '"Gazette des Ardennes," which publishes every imaginable kind of lie about the French and French Army, with garbled quotations from English newspapers calculated to disturb the relations of the French and English prisoners in Germany. For the English there is c, paper in English which is quite as bad, called the ''Continental Times," doled out three times a week.

The Continental Times is largely written by renegade Englishmen in Berlin employed by the Gorman Government, notably .vubrey Stanhope, who for wellknown reasons wiv.s unable, to enter England at the outbreak of war, and so remains, and must remain, in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts this campaign against his own country. For the Tiussians a special lying sheet, called the Kusski Bisnik, is issued. All these newspapers pretend to print the official French, British and Russian communiques. For a long time the effect on the English prisoners was bad, but little by little events revealed to them that the Continental Times which makes a speciality of,attacks on the English Times and Daily Mail, was anti-British. It still masquerades as a paper for Americans in Germany, and for a long time displayed the Stars and Stripes on its front page. One of the American Consuls had this inten-

fcionaf insult to the United States removed. The journal is now as violently anti-American as it is anti-British, and could not exist but for the money provided weekly for the maintenance of the staff, purchase of paper, and printing by the English Department of the German Foreign Office propaganda. The Germans understand only one argument, that of brute force, and no one knows thk better than Lloyd George and .1 is colleagues of the new War Council, who will see that our captured men are given decent treatment in future. The cnem*

will be made to pay for this past inhumanity, Nothing is surer. It may take months and it may take years, but !:>s-' tory teaches that Britain once determined upon a course of action will never rest until she attains it