From times immemorial, I suppose, war prisoners who have not been enslaved by their captors but have been treated without barbarity have sought to enlighten their tedium by various sorts of handicraft, exerting to the utmost their ingenuity in the matter of tools and materials. To-day the subject is one of immediate interest to us. Already have art objects made by prisoners of war interned in Holland and in Switzerland reached us. In time they will come to be as treasured as the antiques made by the prisoners of war of the Napoleonic period and of earlier times. To catalogue the variety of such things would require page after page. Naturally, nearly all such objects are “handy” in size and one does not look for particularly large specimens of war prisoners’ art work. One begins to realize, after visiting the convalescents’ ward of a military hospital, what a blessing to the soldier some knowledge of an art handicraft may be. I have seen several marvelous things whittled out of wood by prisoners of war--bone carvings, beadwork, jewelry--that indicate the godsend the work must be to the soldier prisoner detained in the enemy’s camp. But of all these objects I know of none that are more beautiful than those of straw marqueterie. I do not know where the art originated. Mr. Hodgkin confessed to a like hiatus in his knowledge of the subject. However, I have no doubt that artistic straw inlaying was practised in the Orient at a very early date. Thence it may have been brought into Europe. I feel sure that it was known and practised during the period of the Renaissance in Italy, and I consider the old Italian examples of this craft to be the earliest European ones. This early Italian straw marqueterie is distinguished by its golden hues, suggesting the richness of Venetian paintings. The objects to be covered by the artist in straw were of various materials, such as wood, paper, papier-maché, cloth, and occasionally glass, metal, or bone. The design, pattern, or picture was worked out by pasting filaments and little sections of straw (stained to various colors) on the surfaces of the objects to be covered, which were then varnished. The minuteness of some of this straw-work is extraordinary. It would seem to have necessitated the use of a glass of high magnifying power as well as to have required almost super-human patience and ingenuity to put it together. Moreover, these early pieces in straw marqueterie were so faithfully fabricated that they have come down to us in excellent condition.