The poor quality of the diet was accepted as directly attributable to the beleaguered state of Germany. We knew that the sentries and the staff personnel were getting the same, and that probably the people in the town were faring little better. What we did resent was that we were not allowed to take over our ration in bulk and exercise control as to the manner of its cooking, and also that we were not allowed a rebate for what we did not require. There was only one visible means of retaliation—scrupulously “drawing” the whole of the weekly ration of Boche bread and as scrupulously wasting it or burning it. That never failed to create a commotion, and it was made, before very long, a punishable offence. Almost weekly the messing question figured prominently on the agenda for the senior officer’s conference with the Commandant. Weekly the same privileges were demanded—control of the raw supply, supervision in the kitchen, an equivalent return in money for what we did not require. Weekly the Commandant returned evasive and unsatisfactory replies, and shifted the onus of responsibility on to convenient and distant Hanover. To the end we were not quite sure that he might not, in this one instance, be really telling the truth. The messing system in the Hanover command might really conceivably be directed from a centralised control; but if so, how to reconcile our system with that at Clausthal in the same command, where rebate was allowed as a matter of course? Later on, damning evidence was collected to prove that we were not getting more than two-thirds of our scheduled weight. As a sop we received the unheard-of concession of getting our potatoes in their jackets on two days in the week. There is little doubt, in the retrospect, that our messing at Holzminden probably afforded the easiest field for exploitation, so little interest was taken, during most of the period, in the garbage which was offered us, and so regular and secure was the payment, a credit from our own unsuspecting Government debited automatically against us in our account before we had even the opportunity to turn it into _Lager Geld_, as the paper currency of the camp used to be called. It was hardly to be wondered at that the Supply branch of the German army should have been so venal; the opportunities for profiteering must have been unlimited.