to naming our streets. The result is that to-day Ruhleben can point
to its Fleet Street, its Trafalgar Square, and so on.

Goods were purchased for the various departments according to the
specialities of the shops--boots for the bootshop, clothes for the
clothiers and groceries for the provision stores. The communal
government selected competent men to take charge of these establishments
at a weekly salary of five shillings. Every shop in the camp, with the
exception of a very few, such as mine in which I specialised in
engraving, the ticket-writers and so forth, belonged to the community
and were run by the community for the benefit of the community. No
prisoner was permitted to launch out upon his own account as a
shopkeeper if he intended to deal in a necessity. Only those trades
which involved no stock or might be described as luxuries were permitted
to be under individual management for individual profit.

As the inter-trading in the camp developed we were able to purchase
large stocks of essentials, and it was astonishing to observe the
prosperity with which our trading endeavours flourished. Great Britain
has always been contemptuously described by our commercial rivals as a
nation of shop-keepers, and in Ruhleben Camp we offered our German
authorities, right under their very noses, the most powerful
illustration of this national characteristic, and brought home to them
very conclusively the fact that our national trait is no empty claim.
Thousands of pounds sterling were passed over the counters every week.

While the shops dealt only in what might be termed necessities for our
welfare, we were able to procure almost any article we desired. A
"Special Order Department" was created to which we took our orders for
special articles not stocked in the camp. If the order, upon scrutiny by
the authorities, was deemed to be reasonable and did not infringe the
prohibited list, the arrival of the goods in due course was certain.

The value of this system of managing the colony may be illustrated from
one example, typical of many, which reflects credit upon the captains
and civic organising committee. Butter was a luxury and could not be
purchased in the camp for less than 3s. 2d. per pound. Yet this figure
was decidedly below that ruling in the shops of Berlin for this article
of food. Under these circumstances one might wonder how we were able to
sell butter at a cheaper figure than the native tradesmen, and readers