camps might be worse;
doubtless were. England treated its prisoners best, unless my
information from unprejudiced observers be wrong. But Germany had
enormous numbers of prisoners. A nation in her frame of mind
thought only of the care of the men who could fight for her, not of
those who had fought against her.

Then, the German nature is one thing and the British another.
Crossing the Atlantic on the Lusitania we had a German reserve
officer who was already on board when the evening editions arrived
at the pier with news that England had declared war on Germany.
Naturally he must become a prisoner upon his arrival at Liverpool. He
was a steadfast German. When a wireless report of the German
repulse at Liege came, he would not believe it. Germany had the
system and Germany would win. But when he said, "I should rather
be a German on board a British ship than a Briton on board a
German ship, under the circumstances," his remark was significant in
more ways than one.

His English fellow-passengers on that splendid liner which a German
submarine was to send to the bottom showed him no discourtesy.
They passed the time of day with him and seemed to want to make
his awkward situation easy. Yet it was apparent that he regarded their
kindliness as racial weakness. Krieg ist Krieg. When Germany made
war she made war.

So allowances are in order. One prison camp was like another in this
sense, that it deprived a man of his liberty. It put him in jail. The
British regular, who is a soldier by profession, was, in a way, in a
separate class. But the others were men of civil industries and
settled homes. Except during their term in the army, they went to
the shop or the office every day, or tilled their farms. They were
free; they had their work to occupy their minds during the day and
freedom of movement when they came home in the evening. They
might read the news by their firesides; they were normal human
beings in civilized surroundings.

Here, they were pacing animals in a cage, commanded by two field-
guns, who might walk up and down and play games and go through
the daily drill under their own non-commissioned officers. It was the
mental stagnation of the thing that was appalling. Think of such a lot
for a man used to action in civil life--and they call war action! Think of
a writer, a business man, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, reduced to
this fenced-in existence, when he had been the kind who got
impatient if he had