I was able to comfort him by giving him some cigars, and a great deal of really true and good news about the war, all of which he repeated to Landsturmer Heinrich. I suggested that this might be unwise. "Not a bit of it," he said. "Lots of these old Germans are only too anxious to hear bad news, because they think that bad news will bring the thing to a stop." How true that remark was I knew from my minute investigations. The incident was closed by the distant appearence of a _Feldwebel_ (sergeant-major). My Cockney vanished, and Heinrich patrolled onward. This particular incident is not typical of the life of a British prisoner in Germany, but it is indicative of the position many of the 30,000 prisoners have taken up by reason of their strong individuality and extraordinary cheerfulness and confidence. My impression of them is of alert, resourceful men (their escapes have been wonderful)--men who never know when they are beaten. If Britain has sufficient of these people she cannot possibly lose the war. * * * * * The world does not need reminders such as that of Wittenberg or of such singularly accurate narratives as several in _Blackwood's Magazine_ to know what _has_ happened to British prisoners in Germany. It is common knowledge throughout the German Empire that the most loathsome tasks of the war in connection, with every camp or cage are given to the British. They have had to clean the latrines of negro prisoners, and were in some cases forced to work with implements which would make their task the more disgusting. One man told me that his lunch was served to him where he was working, and when he protested he was told to eat it there, or go without. Conversations that I have had here in London about prisoners give me the impression that the British public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner stands for in German eyes. First, he is a hostage. If he be an officer his exact social value is estimated by the authorities in Berlin, who have a complete card index of all their officer prisoners, showing to what British families they belong and whether they have social or political connections in Britain. Thus when someone in England mistakenly, and before sufficient German prisoners were in their hands, treated certain submarine marauders differently from other prisoners, the German Government speedily referred to this card-index, picked out a number of officers with connections in the House of Lords and House of Commons, and treated them as convicts. The other German view of the prisoner is his cash value as a labourer. I invite my readers to realise the enormous pecuniary worth of the two million prisoner slaves now reclaiming swamps, tilling the soil, building roads and railways, and working in factories for their German taskmasters.