It struck us as deliciously ironical that counter-reprisals on ourselves should be the first outward and visible sign that anything had come of the agitation which had, we knew, been raised on our behalf by influential officers amongst the earlier Holland parties. It ultimately transpired that strong representations had been made to the German War Office as to the maladministration in the Xth Army Corps and particularly in the camps governed by the Twin Brethren, Heinrich and Karl Niemeyer; when it became clear that no attention was being paid to these representations, steps were taken to collect in one camp in England all the German officers who belonged to Hanoverian regiments and to deal with them as a measure of reprisals on appropriate lines. The measure signally failed, after the manner of reprisals. In the first place, it was impossible to find any Englishman at all like the Niemeyers, and therefore the conditions ruling with us could not be even approximately reproduced at home; in the second place, a German government that was as yet impenitent and still sanguine of ultimate success decided that their best course lay in prompt counter-reprisals. One of the features of this “strafe” was that we were invited to send full accounts of it home in our letters, provided only that we also mentioned the alleged reason. An extra letter was offered us in which to do so[9]. This was a clumsy and typical German device to endeavour to alienate popular feeling at home. Needless to say, it was seen through, and not a single letter mentioned the subject at all. [Footnote 9: Normally we were allowed to write two letters in each month (six sides to a letter) and four post-cards.] Any alternative to reprisals as a means for one belligerent power to stop the malpractices of another was not, so far as I am aware, discovered during the war. But it was a poor arrangement at the best.