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Show SET DOGS ON PRISONERS GERARD BARES ATROCITY 3 & tf ? CAMP GUARDS BRUTAL Copies of the Buhletien camp magazine, .all tlie drawings, etc., being the work of the British civilian prisoners. On page 35 of the summer numbsr there is a drawing showing how closely the men were packed in the lofts and other interesting illustrations. IK 0 HI F REM " f.. . flN-ILLUSTRATED PERIODICAL Germans Make Reprisals on Every Rumor That Their Countrymen Are 111-Treated 111-Treated by Enemy. By JAMES W. GERARD, American Ambassador to the German Imperial Court, July 28, 1913, to February Feb-ruary 4, 1917. Copyright, 1917, by the Public Ledger Company. UNDOUBTEDLY tho worst prison camp which I visited 'in Ger-' many was that of Wittenberg. Wittenberg is the ancient town where Luther lived and nailed his thesis to the church door. . The camp was situated sit-uated just outside the city in a very unattractive un-attractive spot next to the railway. An outbreak of typhus fever prevented us from visiting the camp, although Mr. Jackson conversed with some of the prisoners from outside the barrier of barbed wire. When the typhus was finally driven out Mr.- Lithgow Osborne visited the camp and his report of conditions there was such that I visited it myself, in the meantime holding up his report until un-til 1 had verified it. With Charles H. Russell, Jr., I visited vis-ited the camp. Typhus fever seems to be continually present in Russia. Tt is carried by the body louse, and it is transmitted from one person to another. Russian soldiers seem to carry this; disease dis-ease with them without apparently suffering suf-fering much from it themselves. ' The Russian soldiers arriving at Wittenberg were not properly disinfected, and in consequence typhus fever broke out in camp. Several British medical officers were there with their prisoners, because, by (Continued ori Paee Eight.) "My Four Years in Germany" (Ccntlnu;d from Pago One.) thp provisions of' The t Taif c.m ven tins, capture"! mHi"al ofrVer may b1 kept wirh the troops of their nation, if pri-onrs have need of their services. Thee inedica I of ticers protested with the camp commander againpt th trd-ing trd-ing together of th Fren-'h and British prinneT? vith the Riifhians, who, as I have sai'i, wre suffering from typhus fevr-r. Hut the camp commander sai'l, " Yon v.ill have to know your allies.' And h- kpt nil of his prisoners together, to-gether, and thus as surely condemned to death a number of French and British Brit-ish prisoners of war as though he had stood them against the wall and ordered them shot hy a firing squad. then oupi1''! bv the Germans. But i while the Lrglish permitted our em- j bas?y in Paris to inspect the prisoners 1 'Tnr at Havrr, the Germans for I month refused to allow me permission to snd anyone to inspect those Bri'ish rrisoTiprs at Libau. ( as-s came to my attention where iii'tividnal corps commanders on their own initiative directed punitive measures mea-sures against the prisoners of war in ; their districts, on account of the rumors of the bad treatment of German citizens in England. Thus the commander in the district where the camp of !Doe-bnrit7; !Doe-bnrit7; was situated issued an order dt-! recting reprisals against prisoners un- ' zj p.SlffeWia ,..11 A guard struck one of the British medical officers. Conditions in the camp during the period pe-riod of this . epidemic were frightful. The camp was virtually deserted by the Germans, and I understand that the Germau doctor did not make as many visits to the camp as the situation required. re-quired. Frightful Conditions. At the time I visited the camp the typhus epidemic, of course, had been stamped out. The Germans employed a large number of police dogs in this camp, and these dogs not only were used in watching the outside of the camp in order to prevent the escape of prisoners, but were used within the camp. Many complaints were made to me by prisoners prison-ers concerning these dogs, prisoners stating that men had been bitten by the dogs. It seemed undoubtedly true that the prisoners there had been knocked about and beaten in a terrible manner by their guards, and one guard went so far as to strike one of the British Brit-ish medical officers in the camp. There were about thirty-seven civilian civil-ian prisoners in the camp who had been there all through the typhus epidemic. I secured the removal of these civilian prisoners to the general civilian camp at Buhleben, and the conditions at Wittenberg Wit-tenberg may be judged by the fact that when it was announced to these civilians civil-ians that they were to be taken from Wittenberg to another camp, one of them was so escited by the news of release re-lease that he fell dead upon tho spot. In talking over conditions at Wittenberg Wit-tenberg with Von Jagow I said, "Suppose "Sup-pose I go back to Wittenberg and shoot some of these dogs, what can you do to me?" Soon after the dogs disappeared disap-peared from the camp. Food Supplied to Prisoners. The food in all these camps for civilians civil-ians and for private soldiers was about the same. It consisted of an allowance of bread of the same weight as that given the civilian population. This was given out in. the morning with a cup of something called coffee, but which in reality was an extract of acorns or something of the kind without milk or sugar; in the middle of the day, a bowl of thick soup in w:hich the quantity of meat was gradually diminished as war went on as well as the amount of potatoes, po-tatoes, for which at a later period turnips tur-nips and carrots were, to a large extent, ex-tent, substituted; and in the evening, in good camps, there was some sort of thick soup given out or an apple, or an almost infinitesimal piece of cheese or sausage. In the war department at Berlin there was a prisoners-of-war department in charge of Colonel, later General, Fried-rich. Fried-rich. This department, however, did not seem to be in a position to issue orders to the corps commanders commanding com-manding the army corps districts of Germany, who had absolute control of the prison camps within their districts. Colonel Friedrich, however, and his assistants as-sistants endeavored to standardize the treatment of prisoners of war in the different corps districts, and were able to exert a certain amount of pressure on the corps commanders. They determined de-termined on the general reprisals to be taken in connection with prisoners of war. System of Reprisals. For instance, when some of the Germans Ger-mans who had been taken prisoners by the English, and who were in England, were sent by tho English to work in the harbor of Havre, the Germans retaliated re-taliated In- sending about four times the number of English prisoners to work at Libau in the part of Russia der his command on account of what he claimed to be the bad treatment of German Ger-man women in England. It required constant vigilance to seek out instances of this kind and cause them to be remedied. rem-edied. Divided Authority. I did not find the Germans at all efficient ef-ficient in the handling of prisoners of war. The authority was so divided that it was hard to find who was responsible for any given bad conditions. For instance, in-stance, for a long period of time I contended con-tended with the German authorities for better living conditions at the civilian camp of Euhleben. I was promised time and. again by Colonel Friedrich, by the camp commander and by the foreign office that these conditions would be remedied. In that camp men of education, educa-tion, men in delicate health, were compelled com-pelled to sleep and live six in a box stall or so closely that the beds touched each other in hay-lofts, the outside walls of which were only four feet high. Finally, almost in despair, I wrote identical personal letters, after having exhausted all ordinary diplomatic steps, to General von Kessel, commander of the Mark of Brandenberg, to the commander com-mander of the corps district in which the Buhleben camp was situated and to the minister of war, the only result of which was that each of the officers addressed ad-dressed claimed that he had been personally per-sonally insulted by me, because I had presumed to call his attention to the inhuman conditions under which the prisoners were compelled to live in the Euhleben camp. The commander of this civilian camp of Buhleben was a very handsome old gentleman, named Count Schwerin. His second in command for a long time was a" Baron Taube. Both of these officers had been long retired from the army and were given these prison commands at the commencement of the war. Both of them wore naturally kind-hearted, but curiously sensitive, and not always of even temper. On the whole, I think that they sympathized with the prisoners prison-ers and did their best to obtain a bettering bet-tering of the conditions of their confinement. con-finement. The prisoners organized themselves in their various barracks, each barrack having a barrack captain of the barrack, the eaptaiis electing one of their number as a camp captain cap-tain or "obmann." The man who finally appeared as head man of the camp was an ex-cinematograph proprietor named Powell. In my mind, he, assisted by Beaumont and other captains, conducted the affairs of the camp given tho difficulty of dealing deal-ing with the prisoners on one hand and the prison authorities on the other hand as well as possible. Naturally, he was always subject to opposition from many prisoners, among whom those of aristocratic aristo-cratic tendencies objected to being under un-der the control of one not of the highest high-est caste in England and there were others who either envied him his authority au-thority or desired his place. The camp authorities allowed Powell to visit the embassy at least once a week; in that way I was enabled to keep in direct touch with the camp. At two periods during my stay in Berlin I spent enough days at the camp to enable evcrv prisoner pris-oner who had a complaint of any kind to personally present it to me. The organization of this camp was quite extraordinary. I found it impossible impos-sible to get English prisoners to perform per-form the ordinary work of cleaning up the camp, etc., always expected of prisoners pris-oners thoir.seh es, and so, with the funds furnished me from the British government, govern-ment, the camp captain was compelled to pay a number of the poorer proners to perform This work. Secretaries R-.il-dock and Kirk of or.r cmbassv per-I'ormel per-I'ormel the uninteresting and arduous: work nf superintending these payments as well as our other financial affairs. This work was most trying, and they deserve great ere. lit for their self-denial. Additions to Camp Diet. By arrangement with the British government, gov-ernment, I was also enabled to pay the poorer prisoners an allowance of five marks a week, thus permitting them to buy littlo luxuries and necessities and extra food at the camp canteen which was early established in the camp. I i also furnished the capital to the camp canteen, enabling it to make its purchases pur-chases and carry on its business. In this establishment everything could be purchased which was purchasable in Germany, and for months after the commencement com-mencement of the war articles of luxury lux-ury were sold at a profit and articles of food sold at a loss for the benefit of thoso who required an addition to the I camp diet. j There was a street in the camp of i little barracks or booths which the ! prisoners christened Bond street and where many stores were in operation, such as a tailor shop, shoemaker, watchmaker watch-maker and so on. Acting with Powell, I succeeded in getting the German authorities au-thorities to turn over the kitchens to the prisoners. Four of the prisoners who did most excellent self-denying work in these kitchens deserve to be specially mentioned. They were Ernest U Pyke, Herbert Hastner, Bichard H. Carrad and George Ferguson. The "men in this camp subsisted to a great extent upon the packages of food sent to them from England. Credit must be given to the German authorities for the fairly prompt and efficient delivery deliv-ery of the packages of food sent from England, Denmark and Switzerland to prisoners of war in all camps. |