The cells on the first floor, one of which I first inhabited, were roomy, bright, and clean. For furniture they were provided with a table, a stool, and a bed, the latter having a mattress, straw pillow, and woollen covering. In one corner of the room stood the stove, heated from the corridor and surrounded by an iron grating intended to prevent escape by the chimney. On the wall hung a copy of the regulations, whereby prisoners were informed of the various penalties for the slightest departure from the rules. All these rules were framed to spare the staff trouble, and to make the business of looking after the inmates as simple as possible. The interest of the inmates was not considered; they were not treated like people unconvicted of crime, but rather as malefactors deserving punishment, which the prison staff on their own responsibility had to see carried out in their own way. I will give an instance. One day I was conducted from my cell to a corridor on the ground-floor, where a number of prisoners were already ranged along the wall, evidently awaiting something. I was directed to a place. I wanted to know what was happening; and after I had asked several times in vain, the gaoler told me that the Catholic priest had come, and wished to speak to all the prisoners, who would be taken to him one by one in order. I said that I was a Socialist and had nothing to do with Catholic or any other priests. I therefore begged to be taken back to my cell. This seemed to strike the man as irresistibly comic, and he burst into an ironic laugh. “What you want or don’t want is all the same to us. He wants to see you, and so you will be taken to him.” The warders who stood by were immensely tickled. They joked about the Russian barbarian who came to a German prison and expected to have his own opinions taken into account. So before the priest I went, but our conversation was of the shortest. To his question about my religion I answered that I was a Social Democrat, and belonged to no Church. Whereupon he looked at me compassionately and dismissed me.