By this time every man in the camp had been assigned to some particular task. Major Bach did not encourage idleness; it only fomented brooding and moping over our position, was his argument. But he was also a staunch believer in forced labour, which was quite a different thing. Consequently we found ourselves condemned to some of the most filthy tasks conceivable. Incidentally, however, these duties only served to reveal still more convincingly the hollowness of Germany's preachings concerning the principles of health and hygiene to the whole world while herself practising the diametrically opposite. We were commanded to clean out the military hospital. Now, if there is one building among others in which one would expect to discover scrupulous cleanliness it is a hospital, but this accommodation provided for the German recruits was in an indescribably filthy condition. The conveniences for the patients were in a deplorable state. They had neither been disinfected nor cleaned for months. Faecal matter and other filth had been left to dry, harden and adhere with the tenacity of glue to the surfaces. Its removal not only taxed our strength to the supreme degree, but our endurance as well. The stench was suffocating and nauseating. Even the foul aroma of the strong cheap German tobacco which we were able to purchase at the canteen and to smoke while at this task, if our sentry were genial, failed to smother the more powerful and penetrating foul vapours which arose directly water was applied. We were also assigned to the repugnant duty of cleaning out the latrines, which were of the most primitive character, and which coincided with the facilities which one might anticipate among savages but not in such a boasting civilised country as Germany. Both these duties were loathsome, but I am afraid no one engaged on the tasks would be able to express a conclusive opinion as to which was the worse. The duties being so varied, operations often took us a little way from the camp. The chance to get away even for a brief period from our depressing and monotonous surroundings was seized with avidity. Unfortunately, we feared that this system of forced labour would culminate in our being assigned to the work of tending the crops. But we made up our minds irrevocably to do no such thing no matter how we might be punished. The Germans had failed to nourish us in an adequate manner, and we were certainly not going to enable them to secure a sufficiency of food at our expense. Indeed, the one or two attempts which were made to impress us to toil on the land, proved highly disastrous because considerable damage was inflicted from our ignorance of agriculture and gardening.