primitive: "Each officer has his tin tub." One would certainly not wish
to make any hardship of this, yet it is perhaps as well to recall the
U.S. reports on Friedberg and Crefeld in May and April, 1915,
respectively. "The room containing the shower-nozzles would ... do
credit to a club or hotel of the first class." (See p. 23.) At Crefeld:
"The bathroom which I saw has a floor space of about 1,500 square feet,
one-half of which, drained in the centre, lies under some 20 shower
nozzles. There are a couple of porcelain tubs in the other half, and in
the centre there is a large stove. Hot and cold water is available. The
British officers were enthusiastic in their praise of this room." (P.
13.)

A FRIENDLY THOUGHT.

The "Stobsiad," the magazine of the prisoners' camp at Stobs, Scotland,
contains in its seventeenth number (Jan., 1918) a friendly thought for
the interned "enemy" in Germany. The Y.M.C.A. and the Friends tell them
of the ever-increasing need of the interned Englishmen for English
books. "Would it not be possible," the paragraph proceeds, "for our
German readers to place English books that they could part with at the
disposal of the English prisoners of war, just as here German books have
been placed at our disposal. Dr. Elisabeth Rotten's Committee (Berlin,
No. 24, Monbijou-Platz 3) will gladly give further information. It would
give us pleasure if many of our readers would fulfil this wish."

UNRELIABLE COMPLAINTS.

"There has been some trouble with correspondence," we read (_Times_,
l.c.). The Commandant of one camp, while censoring a prisoner's
correspondence, came across a statement that "he slept on a plank bed
with a verminous mattress ... the prisoner admitted that he had written
a false statement in order to induce his friends to send him more
luxuries." I am reminded of a report from Zossen mentioned by the Swiss
Red Cross delegate. I quote from the abstract in the _Basler
Nachrichten_: "It appears that there is much correspondence with
sympathetic ink at Zossen. A great deal of iodine, starch and condensed
milk are sent to the prisoners by their friends. These materials serve
for the preparation of such inks." We have heard of the use of
sympathetic ink in this country. Experience suggests that complaints
made by these methods are not to be relied on. The man who likes to tell
a tall story is not very infrequent, either amongst civilians or
soldiers, and if he can gain notoriety or advantage