Only a week before I had seen the wounded Germans in the freight shed
at Calais and all the prisoners that I had seen elsewhere, whether
in ones or twos, brought in fresh from the front or in columns under
escort, had been Germans. The sharpest contrast of all in war which the
neutral may observe is seeing the men of one army which, from the other
side, he watched march into battle--armed, confident, disciplined
parts of an organisation, ready to sweep all before them in a charge--
become so many sheep, disarmed, disorganised, rounded up like vagrants
in a bread-line and surrounded by a fold of barbed wire and sentries.
Such was the lot of the nine thousand British, French, and Russians
whom I saw at Döberitz, near Berlin. This was a show camp, I was
told, but it suffices. Conditions at others might be worse; doubtless
were. England treated its prisoners best, unless my information from
unprejudiced observers is wrong. But Germany had enormous numbers of
prisoners. A nation in her frame of mind thought only of the care of
the men who could fight for her, not of those who had fought against
her.
Then, the German nature is one thing and the British another. Crossing
the Atlantic on the _Lusitania_ we had a German reserve officer who
was already on board when the evening editions arrived at the pier
with news that England had declared war on Germany. Naturally, he must
become a prisoner upon his arrival at Liverpool. He was a steadfast
German. When a wireless report of the German repulse at Liége came, he
would not believe it. Germany had the system and Germany would win. But
when he said, “I should rather be a German on board a British ship than
a Briton on board a German ship, under the circumstances,” his remark
was significant in more ways than one.
His English fellow-passengers on that splendid liner which a German
submarine was to send to the bottom showed him no discourtesy. They
passed the time of day with him and seemed to want to make his awkward
situation easy. Yet it was apparent that he regarded their kindliness
as a racial weakness. _Krieg ist Krieg._ When Germany made war she made
war.
So allowances are in order. One prison camp was like another in this
sense, that it deprived a man of his liberty. It put him in jail. The
British regular, who is a soldier by profession, was, in a way, in a
separate class. But the others were men of civil industries and settled
homes. Except during their term in the army, they went to the shop or
the office every day, or tilled their farms. They were free; they had
their work to occupy their minds during the day and freedom of movement
when they came home in the evening. They might read the news by their
firesides; they were normal human beings in civilised surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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