did, and
as for the Landsturmers--well, look at old Heinrich here."

At that moment a heavy, shabby old Landsturm soldier came round the
corner, and the Cockney prisoner treated him almost as though he
were a performing bear.

"You're all right, ain't you, Heiny, so long as I give you a bit of
sugar now and then?" he said to his decrepit old guardian in his
German gibberish.

This state of affairs was a revelation to me, but I was soon to
find that if the British prisoners are weary of their captivity
their old German guardians are much more weary of their task.
These high-spirited British lads, whom two years of cruelty have
not cowed, are an intense puzzle to the German authorities.

"You see," remarked a very decent German official connected with
the military censorship department, "everyone of these Britishers
is different. Every one of them sticks up for what he calls his
'rights': many of them decline to work on Sunday, and short of
taking them out on Sunday morning at the point of the bayonet we
cannot get them to do it. We have to be careful, too, with these
Englishmen now. As a man of the world, you will realise that
though our general public here do not know that the English have
captured many Germans lately, and the fact is never mentioned in
the _communiques_, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the
British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that hardship for
these _verfluchte Englander_ may result in hardship for our men in
England."

That incident was long ago. It is important to relate that since
the beginning of the battle of the Somme there is, if I was
correctly informed, a marked improvement in the condition of
English prisoners all over Germany--not as regards food supplied by
the authorities, because the food squeeze naturally affects the
prisoners as it does their guardians, but in other ways.

In addition to the British capturing numbers of German hostages on
the Somme to hold against the treatment of their men in Germany, I
think I may claim without undue pride that much good work has been
done by the American Ambassador and his staff of attaches, who work
as sedulously on behalf of the prisoners as though those prisoners
had been American.

The German authorities hate and respect publicity and force in
matters not to their liking, and Mr. Gerard's fearlessness in
reports of conditions and urgent pleas for improvement have been of
great service. All the threats and blu