and co-operation in a League of
Nations.

I am sorry to say that I fear acts of kindness and fairness will be
largely forgotten by the majority of prisoners on both sides. An
Englishman writes to me of his treatment in Germany: "Consideration was
extended in even greater measure to others, yet not one has opened his
mouth to record it. It makes one loathe one's fellow-men." I quote this
because I am sure that neither side must expect fairness of statement
from men so long exposed to so depressing and often petty a constraint.
After all, when we see the war bias of the man who has not suffered at
all, a calm regard for both sides of the case can scarcely be expected
from those who for wasted years have been too often exposed to hardship,
petty tyranny and a kind of barbed annoyance.

NEUTRAL CAMPS.

Even in neutral internment camps, though there the initial hostility is
absent, misery and bitterness may become very great. The following
cable from Rotterdam appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_ of June 13, 1918:

Interned Britishers here are intensely interested in the
British-German Conference at the Hague, in the hope that it may
result in their repatriation. This is especially the case at
Groningen, where the men of the Royal Naval Division, who have
been interned since October, 1914, are getting desperate. The
June number of the camp magazine had two blank pages, which the
editor explains have been censored out because they contained an
account of the recent "hunger demonstration" and "a moderate
record of the general feeling of the camp."

It is in the internment camps everywhere, rather than in the fighting
line, that bitterness sinks into the soul. It will not be remedied by
more bitterness. But if the suffering of these men's stagnant years
helps to strengthen a universal resolve for peace it will not have been
a useless suffering. And peace means understanding by each of the good
in the other.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Many older men (even those over seventy) were
subsequently interned.]

[Footnote 14: There were 35,000 Germans in Paris alone in 1870,
but though expelled from the Department of the Seine, they were
not interned.]

[Footnote 15: This was emphasised by the German authorities.
See, for instance, Israel Cohen, "The Ruhleben Prison Camp," pp.
21-24.]

[Footnote 16: Cf. pp. 216, 218, etc.]

[Footnote