r, and so remains and must
remain in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts
this campaign against his own country.

For the Russians a special prevaricating sheet, called the _Russki
Visnik_, is issued. All these newspapers pretend to print the
official French, British, and Russian communiques.

For a long time the effect on the British prisoners was bad, but
little by little events revealed to them that the _Continental
Times_, which makes a specialty of attacks on the English Press,
was anti-British.

The arrival of letters and parcels is, of course, the great event
for the prisoners and, so far as the large camps are concerned, I
do not think that there are now any British prisoners unprovided
with parcels. It is the isolated and scattered men, moved often
from place to place for exhibition purposes, who miss parcels.

Soltau, although a model camp, is bleak and dreary and isolated.
At the outset cases of typhus occurred there, and in a neat,
secluded corner of the camp long lines of wooden crosses tell the
tale of sadness. The first cross marked a Russian from far-away
Vilna, the next a Tommy from London. East had met West in the
bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to them slept a
soldier from some obscure village in Normandy, and beside him lay a
Belgian, whose life had been the penalty of his country's
determination to defend her neutrality. Here in the heart of
Germany the Allies were united even in death.

As I made the long journey back to Berlin I reflected with some
content on the good things I had seen at Soltau, and I felt
convinced that the men in charge of the camp do everything within
their power to make the life of the prisoners happy. But as the
train pounded along in the darkness I seemed to see a face before
me which I could not banish. It was the face of a Belgian,
kneeling at the altar in the Catholic chapel, his eyes riveted on
his Saviour on the Cross, his whole being tense in fervent
supplication, his lips quivering in prayer. My companions had
gone, but I was held spellbound, feeling "How long! How long!" was
the anguish of his mind. He must have been a man who had a home
and loved it, and his whole expression told unmistakably that he
was imploring for strength to hold out till the end in that dreary,
cheerless region of brown and grey.

His captors had given him a chapel, to be sure, but why was he in
Germany at all?

* * *