Leaving them, we came to a gate in the barbed wire fences, and passed on foot through a double line of sentries into the main street of the prison camp. One saw on either side rows of long, newly erected, unpainted sheds, separated by side streets of muddy ground and fenced off from the main camp street by more barbed wire. One's first impression was that prisoners of war are among the piteous objects on the face of the earth. You see swarms of shuffling men who before the fortunes of war went against them must have looked smart and soldierly. Now in their uniforms they seemed self-conscious and absurd, sheepish almost because they had to wear regimentals in the presence of the enemy. What must have been a trim-looking British marine caught my eye. His olive drab was tattered and stained; he must have lost his cap or sold it to buy tobacco. What he wore was a battered derby, picked up Heaven knows where! It was characteristic, I afterwards learned, of the entire camp. As we walked up the main street, groups of prisoners ran down the side streets and gathering by the barbed wire fences, stared curiously. We saw a whole battalion of English jackies, more marines, and then swarms of Russians, heavy and stupid looking. Only one enclosure, the Colonel explained, was filled with Frenchmen. The first place that Lieutenant Colonel Alberti put at our disposal was the camp kitchen. We entered one of the long sheds and came into a steaming room, where instantly the chief cook and his assistants stood at attention. The chief cook, following the fashion of his kind, was dressed in white from head to foot, but his assistants wore the field uniforms of Russia, smeared with grease. The eye took in a cement floor that supported three enormous caldrons, each one big enough for three men to hide in and brimming with a white-looking mixture. "They are getting supper ready," explained the Lieutenant Colonel, and he went on to say how the prisoners were fed. "That is a stew made of cabbage and meat; you can see the pieces of meat in it. At four o'clock in the afternoon, and at six-thirty in the morning, the prisoners are given a soup similar to this. Then in the middle of the day they get sausage and bread. Of course we change the diet; very often they have coffee in the morning, also." It did not sound very promising; nor did the stuff in the caldrons look inviting. I asked the Lieutenant Colonel if I might taste some of the stew. To my surprise he was perfectly willing; and to my further surprise I found it to be excellent. Far from being tasteless, it was evidently prepared by a good chef, and there were sufficient pieces of meat to provide ample nourishment for a man partaking of that dish twice a day; certainly he would not be underfed, and in a prison camp one does not expect delicacies.