en you are afraid of the Americans, after all?" I said.

[Sidenote: Why Fritz was sorry to have America in the war.]

Fritz laughed, with a short, contemptuous note. "No, it is not that," he
said. "England will be starved out before the Americans can come in and
then it will all be over. But--just between us, you and me--most of us
here were intending to go to America, after the war, where we would be
free from all this. But--now the United States won't let us in after the
war!"

I shall never forget the day that the papers announced the refusal of
the English labor delegates to go to Stockholm. One excited miner struck
me across the face with the open newspaper in his hand.

[Sidenote: Hatred of the English.]

"Always, always the same!" he almost screamed. "The English block
everything. They will not join and what good can come now of the
conference? They will not be content and the war must go on!"

[Sidenote: Shortage in necessities of life.]

The food shortage reached a crisis about the time that I managed, after
three futile attempts, to escape. Frequently, when the people took their
bread tickets to the stores they found that supplies had been exhausted
and that there was nothing to be obtained. Prices had gone sky-high.
Bacon, for instance, $2.50 and more a pound. A cake of soap cost 85
cents. Cleanliness became a luxury. These prices are indicative of the
whole range and it is not hard to see the struggle these poor mine
people were having to keep alive at all.

[Sidenote: Prisoners receive food from England.]

[Sidenote: Germans wonder at food of starving England.]

At this time our parcels from England were coming along fairly regularly
and we were better off for food than the Germans themselves. Owing to
the long shift we were compelled to do in the mines we fell into the
habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the
mines each day. These lunches had to be carefully secreted or the
Germans would steal them. They could not understand how it was that
starving England could send food abroad to us. The sight of these
lunches helped to undermine their faith in the truth of the official
information they read in the newspapers.

[Sidenote: Wages spent for soap.]

Our lot at the mines was almost unendurable. We were supposed to receive
four and a half marks (90 cents) a week for our labor, but there was
continual "strafing" to reduce the amount. If we looked sideways at a
"stagg