ay to keep you,
after deducting the 60 pfennigs, you still owe us 30 pfennigs a day!"

The idea of us being in Germany's debt for our board and lodging was
certainly humorous. If any one asked me how much it cost the Teutonic
Government in this direction I should consider a halfpenny a day a very
liberal figure.

The efforts of the prisoners to supplement their meagre and monotonous
official allowance of food by purchases at the canteen were handicapped
by the avariciousness and unprecedented rascality of the unprincipled
rogue who was in charge of this indispensable establishment.

When a soldier had secured a few pence, say a shilling, by the sale of
this or that personal belonging, and proffered the coin to the canteen
proprietor, this worthy would pick it up, shrug his shoulders, and
disdainfully push the shilling back with the remark, "English money? No
good here! I can get very little for it!"

At this pronouncement the soldier's face would fall. But dreading denial
of a "broetchen" of which he was in urgent need he would grow desperate.
He would push the coin across the counter again.

"It must be worth something! Now how much will you give for it?" he
would ask pleadingly.

With further demur, elevation of eyebrows, puckering of brows and
hesitancy the canteen proprietor would complete a mental arithmetical
sum in currency exchange. At last he would reluctantly quote a figure,
and as a rule it was about fifty per cent. below the face value of the
coin. Thus the soldier's shilling would only be valued at sixpence in
German money.

The soldier, satisfied at being able to get a "broetchen" even at such a
sacrifice, would submit. But although the unwarranted depreciation was
robbery it was not the worst feature of the methods of this greedy
money-changer.

The soldier would receive, not five English pennies or 50 German
pfennigs as his change but a French half-franc. Then the next time he
visited the canteen for another "broetchen" or something else, he would
put down the half-franc he had previously received. Again the soldier
received a rude surprise. The canteen proprietor would reluctantly say
that the French money was useless to him. There would be a repetition of
the previous bickering over the British shilling, and at last the
astonished soldier would learn that he could only change the French
half-franc at a discount of forty per cent. In this instance the change
would be the equivalent of twopence