daily pay
allowed]. Weekly baths were the regulation, but "it was often possible
for pushing natures to get an extra bath on other days," by a method
which works all the world over. At Burg "the new Commandant was a tall,
well-made, soldierly figure. He had a strong face, curiously resembling
an owl." An amusing little story follows as to the preciseness of the
Commandant and Mr. O'Rorke continues: "It is pleasant to add that this
new Commandant was in one respect just the man that was needed. From the
first day he began to make the place hum, the foul clean, and in time
rendered it habitable. Had there been any, he would have made the dust
fly, but there was not. Indeed the court was at first almost a bog
through which we threaded our way inch deep in mud, and hopped over the
pools. All this disappeared in a few weeks under the Commandant's
direction; the swamp was drained and the path widened." British
officials, too, know that the problem of mud in a confined space trodden
by thousands of feet is one needing energy for its solution.

The Commandant seems to have had a quality more valuable even than
energy--a capacity for learning from those under him. He was a judge by
profession, and was at first stern and terrible, as well as thorough. To
him the prisoners were as ordinary prisoners, "but in time he learnt to
place us in a different category. As for myself, eventually he granted
me facilities for carrying on my work outside the _Lager_, which he
might easily have refused, and when, five months later, we parted, it
was with a certain measure of mutual cordiality" (p. 74). The Adjutant
also learned more cordiality, and adjutants are sometimes prouder of
making others feel their authority than commandants are.

CENSOR FINED BY PRISONER.

The Chaplain instituted a system of fines for "unparliamentary
expressions." "Once I had to fine the German censor. He was engaged on a
hot day in examining a very large number of packages before distributing
them to their owners. He let fall in an unguarded moment the remark that
it was a nuisance to have to open so many parcels--specifying the
particular kind of nuisance he felt it to be ... but unfortunately I
overheard it and he had to pay the penalty. He did so with a good
grace." A touch like this seems to me, personally, to tell more
eloquently than many orations how absurd it is to be regarding one
another as all monsters who ought to be put out of the world.

VISITS