prisoners were taken into the
exercise yard to meet their wives and children. On these occasions when
supplies of food were brought in, some very heart-rending scenes were
witnessed, the little toddlers clinging to their fathers' coat-tails and
childishly urging them to come home, while the women's eyes were wet and
red.

The sanitary arrangements in Klingelputz were on a level with those of
other prisons. Two commodes, with ill-fitting lids, sufficed for ten
men, and in the underground apartment to which we were condemned, and of
which the ventilation was very indifferent, the conditions became
nauseating. To make matters worse the vile prison food precipitated an
epidemic of acute diarrhoea and sickness, so that the atmosphere within
the limited space became so unbearable as to provoke the facetious
Cockney to declare that "'e could cut it with a knife," while he
expressed his resolve "to ask th' gaoler for a nail to drive into it" to
serve as a peg for his clothes! But it was no laughing matter, and we
all grew apprehensive of being stricken down with some fearful malady
brought on simply and purely by the primitive sanitary arrangements.
Only once a day were the utensils subjected to a perfunctory cleansing,
a job which was carried out by the criminals incarcerated in the prison.

These criminals would do anything for us. The first night they tapped at
the door to our cellar, and, peeping through the cracks, we saw a number
of these degraded specimens of German humanity in their night attire.
They had heard who we were and begged for a cigarette. We passed two or
three through the key-hole. The moment a cigarette got through there was
a fearful din in the fight for its possession, culminating in a terrific
crashing. The gaoler had appeared upon the scene! Quietness reigned for
a few minutes, when they would stealthily return and whisper all sorts
of yarns concerning the reasons for their imprisonment in order to
wheedle further cigarettes from us.

We were "clinked" in Klingelputz, as the Cockney expressed it, on
November 6, 1914, and were kept in a state of terrible suspense. At
last one morning the prison officials entered and called out the name of
the three managers of the large works at the village in which K----
resided, who had been imprisoned with us. My friend and I naturally
expected that their order for release had arrived, and we waited
expectantly for their return to congratulate them, since their rel