He treated his dependants as beings of another world—“like dogs” would be too mild a term, for Niemeyer was quite restrained in his dealings with the puppy. He was never seen to return his men’s salutes; he only returned ours as the result of frequent protests. His conduct towards the British orderlies was just the same, except that his vituperation had to be done in English and with therefore more limited scope. To the British officers, except in his moods of Berserker fury, he would be either coldly polite or else offensively hail-fellow-well-met, as the mood took him. If he had any hobbies we did not hear of them. He neither walked nor rode nor indulged in any sport. Once in a blue moon he went for a drive. He was a bachelor, and was understood to loathe the sight of women. Whether he drank or drugged or gambled his many spare hours away at Holzminden is not known. We did not certainly identify him with literary tasks. The knowledge of his power was his main solace, and there is no doubt that he often stirred up trouble in the camp for the sake of trouble. To some such motive only could be ascribed his relentlessly literal interpretation of the Corps regulations. Under a reasonable régime these would never have been pressed. Even so, things at Holzminden would have gone smoothly enough if he had been a gentleman. It was the fact that even this modest provision had not been made on their account that goaded the British to an intense intolerance of the man and all his works; and he, in his turn, looked for moral support to the authority which, with full knowledge, had placed him where he was. Such was Captain of the Reserve Karl Niemeyer. He adopted the policy of alleviating our numerous discomforts only by slow degrees or on the principle of two steps backward for each one forward. A long string of complaints was presented to him on the average about twice a week. The bath-house was at length completed, and the camp watch-dog was promptly lodged in it. When remonstrated with, Niemeyer explained that there was at present no room for the dog’s accommodation in the Kommandantur. So we continued bath-less for another month—those of us, at least, who could not face an icy plunge in the horse-troughs on the _Spielplatz_. When at length the bath-house was vacated and purged, it was found that only two of the showers were effective. Somebody broke one of the electric lamps in the compound: all games were promptly stopped. This left us literally with no outlet for exercise except the monotonous “pound” in shorts and jersey round the camp enclosure, or a furtive game of fives at the end of one of the long corridors, for which it was not always easy to “book a court”!