the
justice of his cause will endure a monotonous diet that would not be
endurable in the prisoner overwhelmed with disappointment and crushed
with sorrow." These considerations are obviously of general application.
SOME COMPARISONS.
Mr. Gerard, in a note of June 28, 1916 [Miscel. No. 25 (1916)],
animadverts strongly on the bad accommodation still provided at
Ruhleben. The letter is rather strikingly different in tone from his
other reports on Ruhleben.
It is intolerable that people of education should be herded six
together in a horse's stall, and in some of the lofts the bunks
touch one another. The light for reading is bad, and reading is
a necessity if these poor prisoners are to be detained during
another winter. In the haylofts above the stables the conditions
are even worse.[24]
Bishop Bury's account ("My Visit to Ruhleben," p. 30) reads:
I don't know whether it was our internment at Newbury,[25] the
race-course for Reading, or our using race-courses, such as
Kempton Park, for the training of our own men, which caused
Ruhleben to be chosen in November, 1914, as a suitable place for
civilians' internment.... Without any description of mine it may
be easily understood what they had to suffer until proper
arrangements were made.... The loose boxes are now properly
fitted with bunks, some being larger than others. The large
corridor, with its stone floor, gives air and space, the lofts
particularly being extremely well adapted now for their present
purpose. I prefer the lofts to the boxes, because they have
corridors out of which one can look, whereas the windows in the
boxes are usually far above the ground. I went to tea more
frequently in the boxes, and on one occasion we sat down sixteen
in number--rather a crowd--but we were quite comfortable.
Bishop Bury has seen something on both sides, and his impressions are
for that reason all the more important. We must not forget, too, that he
lived a week with the prisoners at Ruhleben. It is also only fair to
remember that no one has been invited to spend a week in any camp on
this side. Bishop Bury also tells us "that when, a little time ago, the
authorities proposed to relieve the overcrowding and construct another
camp at Havilburg which could accommodate 600 men, the men at once
petitioned that this idea might not be carried out, as they preferred,
after this length o
|