cers on board treated us as though we were their guests
and not their prisoners. We have as companions two French
officers who were made prisoners the day before us, their
submarine having run ashore."--_Manchester Guardian_,

January 10, 1916.

Captain Wilson (an able-bodied prisoner) has since been unconditionally
released.

THE FOOD QUESTION.

The report already given makes it clear that very similar complaints, or
(as Mr. Jackson puts it [page 16]) complaints that were "exact
counterparts" as to food, have often been made on both sides. It is also
plain that complaints on this score in German camps have been by no
means universal. I do not in the least suppose that the food in general
would be satisfying or other than dreadfully monotonous. ("Oft recht
eintoenig," says Professor Stange quite frankly in his interesting
pamphlet on Goettingen camp.) Loss of appetite, depression, indigestion
will then in many cases produce grave physical trouble. All this may
occur and does occur, without anything like a deliberate attempt at
starvation. British born wives of interned Germans would sometimes, even
before the reduction of rations, speak bitterly of their husbands'
needs. An anti-English journalist might have used such complaints to
charge us with starvation. But even perfectly _bona fide_ complaints
need indicate only monotony, loss of robustness, and consequent physical
(and mental) ills--and indeed the tragedy of these things may become
terribly dark. It is, however, something very different from deliberate
starvation.

In any comparison between the two sides it is only fair to take into
account the special difficulties of the German case. The number of
prisoners in Germany by August, 1915, was probably over one million.
This is an enormous figure. While Great Britain and her Allies have
tried to prevent food from reaching Germany, the drain upon the German
food stock has continually grown as the number of prisoners has
increased. By the end of 1917 this famished country had to support
probably more than two million extra persons. The French Press long ago
frankly regarded this as one of the means of helping towards the
starving out of Germany, while in an American cartoon the Russian
prisoners were figured as an enormous beast with its head in a cupboard
labelled "Germany's Food Supply." These are considerations for the
fair-minded, and it is for them to recall that as soon as ther