"You're all right, ain't you, Heiny, so long as I give you a bit of sugar now and then?" he said to his decrepit old guardian in his German gibberish. This state of affairs was a revelation to me, but I was soon to find that if the British prisoners are weary of their captivity their old German guardians are much more weary of their task. These high-spirited British lads, whom two years of cruelty have not cowed, are an intense puzzle to the German authorities. "You see," remarked a very decent German official connected with the military censorship department, "everyone of these Britishers is different. Every one of them sticks up for what he calls his 'rights': many of them decline to work on Sunday, and short of taking them out on Sunday morning at the point of the bayonet we cannot get them to do it. We have to be careful, too, with these Englishmen now. As a man of the world, you will realise that though our general public here do not know that the English have captured many Germans lately, and the fact is never mentioned in the _communiques_, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that hardship for these _verfluchte Englander_ may result in hardship for our men in England." That incident was long ago. It is important to relate that since the beginning of the battle of the Somme there is, if I was correctly informed, a marked improvement in the condition of English prisoners all over Germany--not as regards food supplied by the authorities, because the food squeeze naturally affects the prisoners as it does their guardians, but in other ways. In addition to the British capturing numbers of German hostages on the Somme to hold against the treatment of their men in Germany, I think I may claim without undue pride that much good work has been done by the American Ambassador and his staff of attaches, who work as sedulously on behalf of the prisoners as though those prisoners had been American. The German authorities hate and respect publicity and force in matters not to their liking, and Mr. Gerard's fearlessness in reports of conditions and urgent pleas for improvement have been of great service. All the threats and bluster of Germany have failed to cow him. To continue my narrative of the Cockney soldier in Russian uniform. So many Englishmen are in Russian uniform, Belgian uniform, French uniform, or a mix-up uniform that there is no possibility of my Cockney Russian being recognised by the authorities, and the photograph which my neutral friend took of him and me was taken under the very eyes of his Landsturmer. "Heiny," said the Russian Cockney, "is fed up with the war. Aren't you, old Heiny? During the last few weeks a fresh call for more men has cleared the district of everything on two legs. We have had to work fourteen hours a day, and I wonder what my mates at home would think of 3 shillings pay for ten days' work?"