IN GERMAN PRISON CAMPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1917, Page 5

IN GERMAN PRISON CAMPS.

HOW A NEW SPIRIT WAS BROUGHT IN. WORK OF THE Y.M.C.A. , "What has come over this camp?" was the question of an astonished camp officer. Captains had told him that discipline had become easier. Irritations on both sides were passing away. The major-general said to the captain who was hailing the new spirit entering the camp : "Here's tho man who is responsible for the transformation." Olandt and his International Committee, made up of scores and hundreds of man of all nationalities, had worked that result on the "programme of friendship." Claus Olandt is an American Y.M C A secretary, who up to January last served 14 prison camps in Germany with from 0000 to 52,000 men in each. Thanks to his organisation thousands of letters have found their way to homes and anxious friends telling that their sons who had been given up for dead for months Were safe.

Tiie instruments furnished brought music and its hope and cheer to these inusic-loving peoples and moat appreciated were the hymns of the church sun" in vast volume and with th c outgoing°aspirations of the heart for God. Cynical, scoffing men got under Olandt's sway. Men thronged to his gospel meetings. Among them was a despondent French distiller on the verge of suicide. A gospel of St. John was given him and his attention pointed to the third chapter. This opened a vista into a new life, led to victory and. gave him heart and hope. In oamp and afterwards in a prison camp in Switzerland he .Became a preacher of force. Men in the camps instead of "doing one another" .began to do for one another and organises for the doing of it, so that the Christian message was interpreted by kindness and cursing and bitterness became less. This was especially marked m the soldiers recruited from, illiterate and coarser laborers and less i educated business men. Though arrangement's made by the Association packages were secured for the many friendless prisoners, handled by the Germans free of charge. These the prisoners shared with the poor men, beenuse of this "new spirit" injected. A call came from Olandt to visit a young Scot in a. prisoners' 'hospital. His greeting was: "I am a very sick man: I have given away all I've got in food clothes land the presents that have eome to me. There is the poor dying Russian, I have helped him; and the Pole in the next bed and some of those m the next ward. I have done what I could to help the other men in trouble now is there any more I can do? I want to be redeemed." Olandt gave him the same words Moody or Drummond might have given: "You can't buy ityou can't pay for it; it's a. gift. Will you take it?" And he said, "I will" And he did.

His was a long three months' sickness, but lie fought his way back to health his open lung wound recovered through the good food cooked and brought at Olandt's suggestion, by a German professor s wife whose brother had died at the west front. Thi 9 young Scot, too, is now preaching by word and works a real Christianity—the gift of grace—in another prison camp in Switzerland. Brigadier-General Victor Odium, of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, is a great admirer of the work" of the Y.M.C.A.< "I want to let you know," he wrote recently, "how much I was impressed by the work done by the Young Men's Christian Association during the recent operations. It was simply magnificent. Almost before the nlace was consolidated your representative had a distributing centre at the top of Hill 145, the crest ot vimy Ridge, and was serving biscuits and chocolate to the men. All ranks were enthusiastic. I have taken tho liberty of recommending one of your officers for a Militarv Cross, anil I sincerely hope it goes through. The Young Men's Christian Association has endeared itself to the soldiers in France as no other institution has."

A notable feature of the Y.M.C.A. war i-work is the extraordinary variety of people who have united in using the Association as a channel of service to the soldiers. Gtfo one would have .dreamed that the forces that have thus found their opportunity of service could have been .brought together on any possible basis. Who could have thought that *orbes-Robertson and his wife (nee Maxine Ellioi), Harry Lauder and Lena Ashwell would have come to the platform of the Association huts for weeks of entertainment, or that the Bishop of London, of Chelmsford, and Oxford, Father Crampton, and Jewisii Rabbis, t-ipsy Smith, and Campbell Morgan would have joined in holding their services for men in British Association •huts? Who would have dreamed of Queen Mary, or the Duchess of Westminster, the Countess of Bessborough, and the Prince of Wales serving tea and buns, cutting bread and even'washing dishes there?