To add to their miseries, the accommodation provided for these prisoners was in many cases pathetically inadequate. The witnesses recur to this again and again. One sleeping place, for instance, for a large party was a barn with no roof. The rain poured in upon the men. They had to sleep in their wet clothes and work in the same clothes. They had no change of any kind. And some of these prisoners, if they survived so long, were kept behind these enemy lines for over a year. Their quarters at Cambrai are thus described by two of the men: our uniforms, without either greatcoats or blankets. There was no fire, and it was very cold. We lay on loose straw, which was full of vermin, and we consequently became verminous. We could only wash in a bucket of cold water, without either soap or towels. The Germans did not supply us with any clothing, and as we had to work in all weathers, conditions were very hard. Our clothes used to get drenched through, but still we had to go back to barracks and sleep in them. It was terribly cold also, especially without our fur coats. We asked for clothing, but never got any. No Parcels or Letters But, added to all these hardships, it was the total absence of parcels and the fact that letters or communications from their friends rarely reached them that placed these prisoners, for misery, in a class apart. Instances are on record where the very existence of some of them was undisclosed by their captors for many months. In March, 1917, for example, a body of these prisoners who had been captured as long before as August, 1916, and had been kept at work by the Germans behind their lines ever since, were returned to a parent camp in Germany weak and emaciated. On arrival there they found a number of their own names in the lists of missing men that had been sent from our War Office through Switzerland and posted in the camp. * * * It seems almost incredible, but the committee do not doubt it to be the fact, that as late as November, 1917, there were at Limburg-am-Lahn undelivered between 18,000 and 20,000 parcels for British prisoners on the German western front. In July, 1917, the German delegates at The Hague plainly recognized that no distinction in respect of the receipt of parcels could be properly made between prisoners of war in occupied territories and others. The agreement then concluded contains provisions on that subject. Having regard to the condition of things at Limburg as late as November, 1917, the committee can only regret that the effect of that agreement was certainly at that date not so manifest as it ought to have been. The matter, they add, is of tragic importance to the prisoners concerned. It made and makes just the difference between starvation and existence to the unfortunate sufferers.