IN time captivity became unbearable. Nothing relieved my gloom—neither letters, parcels forwarded from home by loving hands, the company of my friends, not even hockey, to which I devoted myself so strenuously that in the evenings I used to drop asleep, half-dead from fatigue. It was all of no avail. At last the prisoners’ disease—home-sickness—held me in its grip, as it had held so many before me. The apathy of most dreadful despair, of entire hopelessness. Hopeless! For hours I lay on the grass and stared with wide opened eyes into the sky, and my whole soul longed fiercely for the white clouds above, to wander off with them to the distant beloved country. When an English airman soared quietly and securely in the blue firmament, my heart contracted with pain, and a wild, desperate longing set me shivering. My condition grew steadily worse. I became irritable and nervous, behaved brusquely towards my comrades and deteriorated visibly, both mentally and physically. This was quite unreasonable on my part, for I should have been satisfied that at least I had seen something of the hostilities, and had had many interesting experiences! So many fell wounded into the enemy’s hands during the very first days of the war; but the most to be pitied were those who had come from America at the beginning of the war, forsaking all their goods and chattels, all they held dear, to serve their Fatherland, and had been made prisoners through English treachery, before they had had a chance of drawing the sword. We were greatly depressed owing to our being deprived of war news from German sources, and, though we naturally gave no credence to the lying reports of the English, yet, after a while, we felt the oppression of reading, week after week, nothing but abuse of Germany, tidings of defeats, revolution and famine over there. Uncertainty was our worst trial, and the announcement of Italy’s mean betrayal hit us particularly hard. What triumph in the English papers! At last I was no longer able to bear it. Something had to be done if I were to be saved from despair. Day and night I planned, brooded, deliberated how I could escape from this miserable imprisonment. I had to act with the greatest calm and caution if I hoped to succeed.