It did not mean that we were gluttons. Apart from the absolute necessity of receiving a sufficient amount of English food, parcels and letters were the links connecting us with the Old Country. When a link was broken we felt lost and forsaken. A cessation of letters had a similar effect. Our correspondence was limited to four post-cards and two letters a month. Communication between prisoners of war in different places of internment was prohibited. We were not informed of this, however, until the summer of 1917. A great light dawned on me then, for I could understand at last why my friends in camp had not written to me. While in “solitary” and for two months afterward, I had a struggle to make both ends meet as far as food was concerned. Only a modicum of my letters and parcels from England arrived. I was absolutely ignorant of the fact that friends were helping me with a generosity for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. Having no relatives who could send me food, I applied at last to one of the organizations sending parcels to prisoners of war and was adopted by a generous lady in Southampton. About that time I joined a mess of four. The pooling of our resources made them rather more than merely sufficient for us. I debated whether I should stop the last-named parcels. But there was always so much opportunity of helping others, and so much doubt whether our parcels would continue, that I said nothing. Among a section of the British community it had always been considered an obvious duty to help their less fortunate compatriots with food, when they could afford it and the latter were in need. All new-comers required help until their parcels began arriving. Those who were placed in solitary confinement had to be looked after during the term of their punishment, for they were not permitted to have their parcels. At first this was all done without method and with resulting hardships to individuals. When coöperation among the greater number of the British prisoners was finally brought about, every man “behind the gate” received tea for breakfast, a hot dinner of canned meat and vegetables, and a substantial supper at five o’clock. Occasionally we received cases of food from the Relief in Kind Committee at Ruhleben to be distributed among the British. Here again little method was observed at first. But in course of time the organization was perfected. Up to the beginning of May, 1916, the prisoners had to heat their food on spirit stoves as best they might. Then fuel for these stoves became unobtainable, and the prison authorities turned one of the large cells on the top floor into a kitchen, installing a number of gas-rings at the private expense of the British colony. For a charge the equivalent of a cent, one could obtain a pint of boiling water or use one of the rings for half an hour.