frequent and
urgent is that their wives and families may be visited. For one reason
or another, letters from home very frequently do not reach the
prisoners, and often for weeks or months together they receive no word
of their families." The report goes on: "One man's wife was at the point
of death when he left her and her young children; another's wife with
several children was addicted to drink, and was only kept from it by her
husband's influence; in other cases children were left behind with no
mother to care for them." (The quotations are from the second report of
the Friends' Emergency Committee, January, 1915.) To imagine the anguish
of these cases, whether in Germany or in Britain, is to shrink as from a
blow. Many will feel that the policy of general internment was
unavoidable. But we may surely show generous sympathy where an
unavoidable policy has brought great misery upon thousands who were
innocent. Such sympathy, as we shall see later, always assists
reciprocal sympathy on the other side.

SOME REPORTS ON RUHLEBEN.

I will now turn to the consideration of reports on individual camps for
civilians. The most important German civilian camp, of course, for us,
is that of Ruhleben. If I cite a Report on the Meeting of the Camp
Committee held there on February 4, 1915, a good deal as to the general
management of the camp will become plain. [Miscel. No. 7 (1915) p. 67.]

The following minutes of a meeting of the select committee of
the camp committee and of the overseers,[18] which was called by
Baron von Taube on February 2, were read by the Secretary:

At 6-30 p.m., Baron von Taube received a select committee of the
camp committee in the presence of the assembled overseers of the
latter. Messrs. Powell, Fischer, Jones, Blakely, Cocker,
Overweg, Asher, Hallam, Russel, Aman, and Jones were present;
also[19] Messrs. Delmer, Butcher, Stern, Scholl, Mackenzie,
Horn, Klingender, Butterworth, and Hatfield.

Having greeted the assembled members, the Baron proceeded to say
that he thought it would be best if only three or four delegates
from the camp committee were to discuss matters directly with
the overseers. He expressed his views and compared the
management of the camp with the administration of a town of
10,000 inhabitants. Too many participants might only render the
work of the overseers more arduous. He therefore suggested that
at the m