ANOTHER STUDY OF THE GERMAN

AS HE IS *

[The deplorable attitude of the British Authorities-whoever and wherever they may be towards the maltreatment of our unfortunate Prisoners of War in the hands of the German fiend, is universally condemned and must obviously be reconsidered. A change is long overdue. One aspect of that attitude has been, as the chief Government organ, the Times, complains, "the bottling up" of the facts. There has been the utmost official and semi-official discouragement of the discussion of these horrors. For this policy there can be no shadow of any military justification as the greater the knowledge of the truth the greater the gain from the fighting point of view. We are therefore driven to the disagreeable conclusion that like most otherwise inexplicable incidents in this extraordinary war the Government must have been animated by some motive which would seem less satisfactory to the rest of the community than it is to themselves. We suspect that in so far as the conduct was not due to that crass idiocy rampant in many Departments, it was part of the general policy of damping down public indignation against the enemy as calculated to interfere with that ultimate" selling of the pass" for which prominent statesmen are already preparing us.

Although the Authorities have been able to limit publicity of the facts concerning Prisoners of War, which would have made the very best Propaganda, they have not succeeded in suppressing everything. From time to time we get a poignant document from Mr. Justice Younger's Committee disclosing enough to enable us to guess the rest. We reproduce the last of these textually from the White Paper in which it was published, and we earnestly entreat our readers to master its contents and to pledge themselves that, War Cabinet or no War Cabinet, Germany must suffer for such crimes. It is idle to talk of "the triumph of Right over Might," of "the vindication of International Law," of" Leagues to Enforce Peace," if deliberate, calcu

"Report [by Mr. Justice Younger's Committee] on the Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War behind the Firing-lines in France and Belgium "-presented to both Houses of Parliament, April 1918.

lated, cold-blooded, gratuitous cruelty is to be ignored. Peace without Punishment would be the greatest triumph of wickedness since the creation of this none too virtuous world.-EDITOR, National Review.]

THE detention and employment by the German armies behind their firing-line in Belgium and France of British N.C.O.'s and men captured on the Western Front has brought upon these prisoners an amount of unjustifiable suffering for which a parallel would be hard to find in the history, tragic in so many of its incidents as that history has been, of the treatment by the enemy of their prisoners during this war.

The evidence on the subject rapidly accumulates, although the story is not yet completely known. In full detail it will not be ascertainable until after the close of hostilities. And this for several reasons. As is well known, both American and Dutch visits to prisoners in occupied districts have always been strictly forbidden by the German Command. The actual condition of the men there has accordingly throughout been hidden from neutral eyes. Again, it has only been slowly that information from other quarters has gradually filtered through to this country. At this no surprise need be felt, for reasons that are obvious. That information, however, has now become comprehensive, and it is especially striking in this, that coming as it does from every kind of independent source, all of it conveys the same impression of acute and prolonged suffering.

Accordingly the Committee are satisfied that they are at length in a position to present this Report to His Majesty's Government with confidence that it may be relied upon.

And being so satisfied, the Committee are convinced that such a Report ought no longer to be delayed. Their regret is that they have not been in a position to present it earlier. It is right in their view that the authorities should have before them at the earliest possible moment summarized statements as to the treatment of British prisoners behind the enemy fronts both on the West and the East. This Report the Committee have thought it well to submit first. A Report on the Eastern Front they have now in preparation. It is convenient to deal with the two aspects of the subjects separately.

And there is now no doubt in the minds of the Committee that as early, at the latest, as the month of August 1916 the German Command, under conditions to be described later, were systematically employing their British as well as other prisoners in forced labour close behind the Western firing-line, thereby deliberately, it must be so said, exposing them to the fire of the guns of their own and Allied armies.

This fact has never been acknowledged by the German Govern

ment. On the contrary, it has always been studiously concealed. But that the Germans are chargeable even from that early date with inflicting the physical cruelty and the mental torture inherent in such a practice can no longer be doubted.

Characteristically in this case, as in so many similar instances, when conduct in itself incapable of justification could no longer be concealed, the official German apologist has sought to gloss over or excuse the practice by asserting that Germany was driven to it by way of retaliation for something as bad charged by her against her enemies. In this instance the excuse put forward has been that this treatment, not apparently suggested to be otherwise defensible, was forced upon the German Command as a reprisal for what was asserted to be the fact-namely, that German prisoners in British hands had at some time or other been kept less than 30 kilometres (how much less does not appear) behind the British firing-line in France.

Even if to any extent well founded, that excuse would be no justification for the calculated brutality of the so-called reprisals actually adopted. But in truth the excuse itself will not bear examination.

In the dispatch in which the assertion just mentioned was first made, and the so-called reprisal first foreshadowed-a dispatch dated January 24, 1917-the German Government affirmed that in the French and Belgian territories occupied by German troops no British prisoners of war had hitherto been detained for any considerable time, with the exception of the sick and wounded undergoing treatment in hospitals and the prisoners employed in the hospital services. This statement was quite unfounded. These prisoners in great number, with other prisoners from the Allied armies, had already for months been detained at work immediately behind the German lines in both France and Belgium.

Furthermore, at the end of April 1917 an agreement was definitely concluded between the British and German Governments that prisoners of war should not on either side be employed within 30 kilometres of the firing-line. Nevertheless the German Command continued without intermission so to employ their British prisoners, under the inhuman conditions stated in this Report. And that certainly until the end of 1917-it may be even until now--although it has never even been suggested by the German authorities, so far as the Committee are aware, that the 30 kilometres limit agreed upon has not been scrupulously observed by the British Command in the letter as well as in the spirit.

Indeed, the German excuse is too specious to be worthy of serious refutation. It would not have been mentioned at all in this place had it not been for the fact that it is embodied in different

official documents, some of which enter into detailed descriptions of the reprisals alleged to be in contemplation because of it. And it so happens that these descriptions are in substantial accord with treatment which the Committee, from the information in their possession, now know to have been in regular operation for months before either the threat or the so-called excuse for it, and to have continued in regular operation after the solemn promise of April that it should cease. These documents accordingly have acquired a certain value of their own, and thus may be usefully referred to. They definitely commit the German Command to at least a threatened course of conduct for which the Committee would have been slow to fix them with conscious responsibility. Incidentally they corroborate in advance the accuracy, in its incidents, of the information, appalling as it is, which has independently reached the Committee from so many sides.

As a typical example, the Committee here set forth a transcript in German-English, of one of these pronouncements of which extensive use was made. It is a notice entitled "Conditions of Respite to German Prisoners." As here given it was handed to a British N.C.O. to be read out, and it was read out to his fellowprisoners at Lille on April 15, 1917:

Upon the German request to withdraw the German prisoners of war to a distance of not less than 30 kilometres from the front line, the British Government has not replied; therefore it has been decided that all prisoners of war who are captured in future will be kept as prisoners of respite.

Very short of food, bad lighting, bad lodgings, no beds, and hard work beside the German guns, under heavy shell-fire. No pay, no soap for washing or shaving, no

towels or boots, etc.

The English prisoners of respite are all to write to their relations or persons of influence in England, how badly they are treated, and that no alteration in the ill-treatment will occur until the English Government has consented to the German request; it is therefore in the interst of all English prisoners of respite to do their best to enable the German Government to remove all English prisoners, of respite to camps in Germany, where they will be properly treated, with good food, good clothing, and yon will succeed by writing as mentioned above, and then surely the English Government will consent to Germany's request, for the sake of their own countrymen.

You will be supplied with post card, notepaper, and envelope, and all this correspondence, in which you will explain your hardships, will be sent as express mail to England.

As will presently appear, that document certainly did not err on the side of overstatement.

The Committee have before them the testimony, direct and reported, of many who had already for long been experiencing to the full the treatment there only professedly foreshadowed; they have in their hands the statements of many more who witnessed its effects on victims who survived it or escaped from it. So widespread, indeed, is the Committee's information, even at this stage, that this Report would fail of its purpose if the Com

mittee were to attempt to discuss the evidence in detail. They must content themselves for the present with summarizing its effect.

And first of all the Committee, as indeed has already been stated, are quite satisfied that the treatment in question commenced to be systematic not later than August 1916. The prisoners were, it seems, kept in large numbers at certain places in the West-Cambrai and Lille are frequently referred to in the evidence-but in smaller numbers they are placed all along the line. Their normal work was making roads, repairing railways, constructing light railways, digging trenches, erecting wire entanglements, making gun-pits, loading ammunition, filling munition wagons, carrying trench-mortars, and doing general fatigue work, which under pain of death the N.C.O.'s were compelled to supervise.

This work was not only forbidden by the laws of war, it was also excessively hard. In many cases it lasted from eight to nine hours a day, with long walks to and fro, sometimes of 10 kilometres in each direction, and for long periods was carried on within range of the shell-fire of the Allied armies. One witness was for nine months kept at work within the range of British guns; another for many months; others for shorter periods. Many were killed by these guns; more were wounded; deaths from starvation and overwork were constant.

One instance of the Allied shell-fire may be given. It is referred to more than once in the evidence. In May 1917 a British or French shell burst among a number of British and French prisoners working behind the lines in Belgium. Seven were killed; four were wounded.

But there is much more to tell. The men were half starved. Two instances are given in the evidence of men who weighed 13 stone when captured. One was sent back from the firing-line too weak to walk, weighing 8 stone only; the other escaped to the British lines weighing no more. no more. Another man lost two stone in six weeks. Parcels did not reach these prisoners, for a reason to be explained later. In consequence they were famished; such was their hunger, indeed, that we hear of them picking up for food potato peelings that had been trampled underfoot. One instance is given of an Australian private who, starving, had fallen out to pick up a piece of bread left on the roadside by Belgian women for the prisoners. He was shot and killed by the guard for so doing.

It was considered, so it would seem, to be no less than a stroke of luck for prisoners to chance upon guards who were more merciful. For instance, one of them speaking of food at Cambrai says:

If it had not been for the French civilians giving us food as we went along the roads to and from work we should most certainly have starved. If the sentries saw us make a