earer and we saw that the prisoners were
priests our curiosity gave way to feelings of intense disgust. They were
twenty-two in number and were garbed just as they had been torn from
prayer by the ruthless soldiers. Some were venerable men bordering on
seventy. Subsequently I discovered that the youngest among them was
fifty-four years of age, but the average was between sixty and seventy.

The reverend fathers with clasped hands moved precisely as if they were
conducting some religious ceremonial among their flocks in their beloved
churches. But the pace was too funereal for the advocates of the
goose-step. They hustled the priests into quicker movement, not in the
rough manner usually practised with us, but by clubbing the unfortunate
religionists across the shoulders with the stocks of their rifles,
lowering their bayonets to them and giving vent to blood-freezing
curses, fierce oaths, coarse jeers, and rewarding the desperate
endeavours of the priests to fulfil the desires of their captors with
mocking laughter and ribaldry.

The brutal manner in which they were driven into the camp as if they
were sheep going to the slaughter, made our blood boil. More than one of
us clenched our fists and made a half-movement forward as if to
interfere. But we could do nothing and so had to control our furious
indignation.

However, the moment the priests entered Sennelager we received a
respite. Officers and guards turned their savagery and spite from us to
visit it upon these unhappy victims by night and by day and at every
trick and turn. Clubbing with the rifle was the most popular means of
compelling them to obey this, or to do that. More than once I have seen
one of the aged religionists fall to the ground beneath a rifle blow
which struck him across the back. No indignity conceivable, besides a
great many indescribable, was spared those venerable men, and they bowed
to their revolting treatment with a meekness which seemed strangely out
of place.

After one more than usually ferocious manifestation of attack I
questioned our guard to ascertain the reason for this unprecedented
treatment and why the priests had been especially singled out for such
infamous ferocity.

"Ach!" he hissed with a violent expectoration, "They fired upon our
brave comrades in Belgium. They rang the bells of their churches to
summon the women to the windows to fire upon our brothers as they
passed. The dogs! We'll show them! We'll break them be