allowed to be
spat upon by the public, and were given coffee into which the
public were allowed to spit. These are but a few of the slights
and abominations heaped upon them. Much of it is quite unprintable.

Many a night did I lie awake in Berlin cogitating how to get into
touch with some of these men. I learned something on a previous
visit in 1914, when I saw the British prisoners at one of the
camps. At that time it was impossible to get into conversation
with them. They were efficiently and continually guarded by
comparatively active soldiers.

On this occasion I came across my first British prisoner quite by
accident, and, as so often happens in life, difficult problems
settle themselves automatically. In nothing that I write shall I
give any indication of the whereabouts of the sixty prisoners with
whom I conversed privately, but there can be no harm in my
mentioning the whereabouts of my public visit, which took place in
one of the regular neutral "Cook's tours" of the prisoners in
Germany.

The strain of my work in so suspicious a place as Berlin, the
constant care required to guard one's expressions, and the anxiety
as to whether one was being watched or not got on my nerves
sometimes, and one Sunday I determined to take a day off and go
into the country with another neutral friend. There, by accident,
I came across my first private specimen of Tommy in Germany.

We were looking about for a decent Gasthaus in which to get
something to eat when we saw a notice high up in large type on a
wall outside an old farmhouse building, which read:--

Jeder Verkehr der Zivilbevolkerung mit den
Kriegsgefangenen ist STRENG VERBOTEN,

"Any intercourse of the civil population with the prisoners of war
is strictly forbidden."

These notices, which threaten the civilian population with heavy
penalties if they exchange any words with the prisoners, are
familiar all over Germany, but I did not expect to find them in
that small village.

My neutral friend thought it would make a nice photograph if I
would stand under the notice, which I did after a cautious survey
showed that the coast was clear.

As I did so a Russian came out of the barn and said, in rather bad
German, "Going to have your photograph taken?" I replied, in
German, "Yes."

He heard me speaking English to my friend, and then, looking up and
down the street each way to see if we were being watched, he
addressed me in English with a strong