A great deal has been said and written on the subject of the treatment of British prisoners of war, and the general idea at the present moment is one of a succession of unparalleled brutalities and insults. That much inhumanity has been shown it is neither possible nor desirable to deny, and it is only just that those responsible should have to give an account of their actions. But it must be borne in mind that though all the instances brought forward are perfectly true and authentic, propaganda aims not at the _vraie vérité_, but at the establishment of an argument; and the individual instances, which have formed the foundations of this conception of inhumanity, do not present a complete picture of captivity, and should not be taken as typical of every prison camp. Of course one can only write about what one knows. Baden-Hessen is one of the more moderate provinces; and the treatment of officers is infinitely better than that of the men. But, speaking from my own experience, I can say with perfect sincerity that, from the moment when I was captured to the moment of release, I was not subjected to a single insult or a single act of brutality. I was treated with as much courtesy as I should have expected from a battalion orderly-room, and the discomforts and inconveniences of the journey were due in the main to faulty organisation. It sounds bad when one hears that a batch of prisoners were sent on a four days’ journey with rations for one day, but the corollary that the accompanying German sentries were provided with exactly the same amount of food casts a very different aspect on the case. The starvation of prisoners has become almost an axiom, and indeed they were miserably underfed; but so was the entire German people, and the custom of treating prisoners as well as civilians is confined to England. Among all continental nations it is an understood thing that on the scale of diet the enemy should come last, and in Germany there was only enough food for a bare existence. In this respect, I believe, officers were much more fortunate than their men, and certainly they had the great advantage of a permanent address. For the men were being continually moved from one camp to another. At one time they would be working in the fields, at another in the salt mines, sometimes stopping for a couple of months, sometimes only for a few days. The result of this was that their parcels were trailing after them right across Germany. At times they would go several months without one at all, and then if they had the luck to make somewhere a prolonged sojourn, they might receive thirteen parcels within three days. Of course the men shared out their parcels as far as possible, but they were never certain what was coming next, and they had many very hungry days.