appeal; with dread we watch the approach of another war-winter,
bearing, as it must, a fresh succession of distresses,
deprivations and reprisals. Therefore we cannot keep silence....
Numbers of civilian prisoners have been suffering since the
beginning of the war from the depressing conditions of the
concentration camps.... The civilian took no part in the war,
and in most cases did not even desire it. He should not
therefore be treated as a prisoner of war.
Belligerent States! We call upon you to exchange all your
civilians now interned.... This exchange must naturally be
effected under certain conditions to be established. Each State
must bind itself not to employ the liberated civilians for
war-work; just as was arranged in the case of military prisoners
who have been repatriated or sent to neutral countries. With
these conditions, no belligerent should refuse to liberate the
civilians so unjustly imprisoned.
Honour will be theirs who act upon this appeal....
The signatories to this appeal are G. Wagnière (Editor of the _Journal
de Genève_), Dr. A. Forel (Professor at Zurich University), Ed. Secrétan
(National Councillor), Benjamin Vallotton, Charles Baudouin (Professor
at the Institut J. J. Rousseau), Ch. Bernard, P. Seidel (Professor at
the Cantonal Technical College, Zürich), A. de Morsier, Ph. Dunant
(Lawyer of Geneva), Paul Moriand (Professor of Medicine at Geneva), and
MM. Blonde and Arcos.
The Swiss Red Cross has also appealed for the release of all interned
civilians.
From this side the following private appeal on behalf of all prisoners
has been addressed to the Red Cross at Cologne:
I feel it incumbent upon me ... to draw your attention to the
acute disappointment that is being caused among the prisoners in
all the camps, and almost equally among their friends outside,
by the delay in repatriation. Every phase in the long series of
public discussions and official negotiations, every hitch, and
every hesitation, has been followed with painful anxiety by
those of us who know what it means for all these thousands of
victims languishing in confinement, and you may be sure, with
much more intensely painful anxiety by the victims themselves,
whose ears are pathetically strained to catch the feeblest echo
of any rumour from the outside world that brings them the
slightest hint of release. For months these poor fellows had
been continually alternating between hope and despair, when the
news of the Hague meeting seemed for large numbers to bring them
definitely, at long last, within measurable distance of the
reality. Knowing therefore as you do, equally well with us, the
mental condition of these men, and the terribly demoralising
effect of long internment, even under the best conditions, you
will realise the deep depression into which they are now being
plunged by all the inexplicable delays in carrying out the terms
of the convention. From every one who comes in contact with them
I gather the same impression, that unless the Gordian knot is
cut and a way is quickly found out of the present impasse, the
most serious results are to be apprehended, as numbers of
prisoners here--and the case can be no better in other
countries--are on the verge of insanity....[28]
I would put it therefore to you in all earnestness that it is
your duty, as representing humanity, to bring without delay all
the pressure and all the influence you possess to bear upon the
authorities to consider the sufferings of the prisoners and
induce them, if possible, even at the cost of some concessions,
to facilitate from their side the carrying through of this
scheme, in which I can assure you not merely the happiness but
even the life of many men is involved.
I speak, of course, quite unofficially, and with no other motive
than pure philanthropy, but I may venture to hope that my
representations, though only those of a private individual, will
carry more than ordinary weight, inasmuch as there is perhaps
nobody whose information and experience in these matters are
more real and vital, or entitle him to speak with more
authority.
Nor do I stand alone, for there are many others with whom I have
worked from the beginning in the same field. All these associate
themselves with me in this appeal, and, like myself, with no
other motive than that of simple humanity. If the time, the
energy, and the money we have all spent so unstintingly to
improve the prisoners' lot give us any title to be heard, we all
implore you, not only for the sake of the prisoners themselves,
but in the eternal interests of humanity and justice, to do, and
to do quickly whatever you can in furtherance of this object. We
quite understand, of course, that military interests must be
considered, but it is not always possible for those in high
places, with whom such decisions rest, to realise as vividly as
we do all that is at stake in a question of this sort, and that
is why we feel entitled to assume that your advice would not be
without effect, and that being the case, we submit it becomes
your solemn duty to tender it.
The sufferings of this war are indeed vast beyond all comprehension. Is
not there danger that this very fact may lead us to add to that
suffering without need?
"ROTTING AWAY."
In a pathetic appeal to be given work the men at one internment camp
here said, "We are simply rotting away." And others say, "The people
outside do not understand." Loss, heartache, privation, stagnation,
friction, stupid and malicious gossip, mental and moral
deterioration--"rotting away." This disintegration of personality, the
gradual rotting of the man's selfhood, is perhaps, clearly envisaged, as
great a horror as war can bring. It is not the result of deliberate
cruelty, but simply of conditions most of which are inevitable if there
is to be internment at all.
A REPORT ON KNOCKALOE.
The reports available on our own internment camps do not go back beyond
March, 1916.[29] It is perhaps well to remind ourselves that even by
May, 1916, there were still defects. Thus in the American Report of May
18, 1916, on Knockaloe, we read: "The huts are being put in good
weather-proof condition, and are being protected against the wind and
rain by felt and tarred paper."[30] As to sanitation, "There have been
improvements in the sanitary arrangements since our last visit." "In the
hospital in Camp IV. there is now being built a recreation room, where
convalescents may sit, which will give more room for the patients; also
a special sink has been provided for washing the hospital utensils, and
new latrines have been installed. They seem to be at work at this
hospital to improve its condition. As Camp IV. has the largest number of
older men interned, this hospital has more patients than others, and
seemed rather crowded at the time of our visit." "In the isolation
hospital we found only one bath and one tap for all the patients who are
suffering from various sorts of contagious diseases. We took this matter
up with the proper authorities, who assured us that it should have their
attention. The sanitary arrangements in all the hospitals might be
improved, except possibly in Camp I." "There were complaints about the
hospital treatment, particularly of the care of the eyes, ears and
teeth, for which the interned men claimed that there was not sufficient
opportunity for special treatment."
These last complaints are curiously parallel to some made at Ruhleben.
[See Miscel. No. 3 (1916) pp. 3, 15, 16.]
"There was complaint that there were no shelters for the men while
waiting to receive parcels, nor for outside patients visiting the
doctor. This matter was taken up."
"In Camp III. a complaint was made about the difficulty of personal
intercourse between the representatives of the camp and the Commandant.
This had caused dissatisfaction. The men seemed to have confidence in
the new Commandant, but they told us that they had difficulty in
approaching him. We took this matter up with the proper authorities, and
were informed that they would in future have more opportunity for
personal intercourse."
The huts for sleeping accommodation "are sectional, being of the regular
War Office pattern, 30 feet by 15 feet, each section holding thirty
men." This gives us a floor space of 450 square feet for each thirty
men. In that portion of the Ruhleben loft most adversely criticised by
Mr. Gerard the roof slopes from 10 feet at the ridge to a height of
4½ feet only at the sides. The floor space allowed, however, is 10.2
metres by 12.8 metres, giving us about 1,390 square feet for 64 men, or
651 square feet for thirty men. When all allowance is made for the
lowness of the sides in the rather wide loft (it seems to be more than
30 feet wide), this worst accommodation at Ruhleben seems, as regards
space available, not inferior to that at Knockaloe. Further details
would be needed for a complete comparison.
The report on Knockaloe is not enthusiastic, but evidently there had
been many improvements, and still more was hoped for from the new
Commandant. "The new Commandant, who has only been there some ten weeks,
seems to have gained the confidence and respect of the interned men. He
seems to be doing all in his power to better the conditions of the camp.
He finds difficulty in getting material, such as tarred paper or felt,
etc., for use on the huts. He told us that he had the matter in hand,
and was giving betterment of the conditions at the camp every
attention.... The whole tone of the camp is much better than it was at
the time of the last visit. (See report of January 8, 1916.) There were
fewer complaints, and the prisoners seemed much more contented."
A BRITISH COMMANDANT.
It is unfortunate that we cannot "see" the earlier report to which we
are directed. But it is good to know that the new Commandant, Col. F. N.
Panzera, proved to be a Christian gentleman with real sympathy for the
unfortunate men under his charge. Like many other commandants, both here
and in Germany, he did, amidst the various difficulties, what he could.
As he is, alas, now dead, we may perhaps quote the words he addressed to
the men in his care at the Christmas of 1916. It is a strange reflection
that it might have injured his position to quote this fine and simple
message during his life-time. Colonel Panzera wrote:
I am sorry that the size of the camp prevents my seeing you all,
which I should do if it were smaller and thus possible. It would
be a mockery to wish you a "Happy Christmas," I am afraid, but I
wish you as happy a one as is possible under the circumstances.
I most earnestly wish you a happier New Year. May the New Year
bring Peace and restore you to all dear to you. I hope that
prosperity and happiness may come to you in the future, and may
in time obliterate the memory of the present period of sadness.
I should like to take the opportunity of saying how much I
appreciate the general good behaviour of the camps during the
past year. There have been little lapses, as there must always
be in a mixed community of 25,000 people, but on the whole the
conduct has been extremely good, which has been a great help to
those placed over you. Once more I wish you as good a Christmas
as possible and a better New Year.
FOOD DIFFICULTIES.
The food question also becomes increasingly serious in the camps, as it
does in prisons. I confess I feel we ought to ration ourselves very
strictly before we cut down the supplies of our prisoners, criminal or
otherwise. "The reduced diet," wrote Fenner Brockway of his prison
experiences, "is one of semi-starvation, and every prisoner is becoming
thin and physically weak." (_Labour Leader_, September 6. 1917.) Those
who care to inquire of the wives of interned men will learn their side
of the case as regards the effect of changed conditions in the camps.
The sad feature is that the increasing rigour comes upon men already
weakened, both physically and mentally, by long confinement. The
original published statement of Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey [Misc. 7
(1915), p. 23] no longer obtains. The food is, of course, very
different, and may not be supplemented.
TWO KINDS OF RUMOUR AND SOME REALITY.
I have not cared to quote adverse "unofficial information and rumours,"
either as regards our own or other detention camps. What some adverse
critics say about our own may be read in the _Woman's Dreadnought_, Vol
III., p. 551. The rather terrible appeal of the Captains at Knockaloe is
also printed on p. 561. It is a letter which is unwise and hysterical. I
do not wonder at its hysteria, and I confess that some things in the
letter hit me rather hard. But, alas, the desperation of the interned
men on either side does not help towards wise judgment, and for that
desperation we are all, in every country, in some measure responsible.
It is best to remember instead the real sympathy that those actually in
touch with prisoners do often feel. Colonel Panzera's message is clear
evidence of this, and from a private letter I take the following:
The attitude of prejudice or even hatred towards enemies,
whether prisoners or not, often disappears when men are brought
face to face in the work of an internment camp, for example, and
find that they are very much like each other. An officer of a
certain camp here was taken prisoner and interned for six months
in Germany before he escaped. He says that two or three times
the officers of the camp were changed, and in each case began
with harsh treatment, either the result of official suggestion
or of the general feeling. In each case, after the lapse of a
short time, close acquaintance modified this attitude, and
finally kindly relations and treatment resulted. In the same way
the nurses in a certain hospital here refused to receive or
treat German prisoners until a company of the wounded men
arrived, when the feeling of natural humanity proved too strong,
and they were quite eager to attend to them. At the internment
camps in this country the officers generally speak of the men
under their charge with humanity and respect.
The following is significant. "In the town near a certain internment
camp of ours much indignation was roused by the story that some of the
interned aliens had set in motion some railway trucks on a sloping
siding, with the intention of allowing them to crash into an arriving
passenger train at the bottom. An English friend of mine happened to
observe the real origin of the story. The trucks _began to move in an
accidental way, and two or three of the aliens nearly lost their own
lives, certainly risked serious accident, in endeavouring to stop the
trucks when they were already moving_."
Thus in the quiet neighbourhood of an internment camp a brave deed
becomes by popular passion transformed into something monstrous. What
would this popular imagination do in an invaded district? Its vagaries
must be experienced and studied by any investigator of the atrocities of
war.
Another example of heroism amongst German prisoners I take from the
_Daily News_ of April 30, 1918. A small boat in which two men were
sailing capsized about 200 yards out from the Leasowe Embankment,
Cheshire. The men, clinging to the bottom of the boat, were being driven
out by the tide when two members of an escort of German prisoners,
Sergeant Phillips and Private Matthews, jumped into the water and with
difficulty brought one man back. One of the German prisoners, named
Bunte, volunteered to go to the rescue of the other man, who was by then
in great danger. The German swam out strongly and brought the man back.
AGAINST BITTERNESS.
I fear that on both sides it is embittered men who will be released from
the civilian internment camps. People do not realise how financial ruin,
harassment, illness and death (to which the harassment may have
contributed) follow in the track of internment. A man is interned, his
wife and family are reduced to a mere pittance, the woman is, it may be,
delicate. She falls ill and dies.[31] And amid such incidents and the
mental strain of the confinement a brooding hatred gradually settles
down upon the souls of these sufferers. Personally, I do not feel one
can expect much favourable memory of the authorities on either side.
Certainly every one who has worked for prisoners is touched by their
gratitude, but the iron has entered into their souls for all that. And
perhaps it is well to remind ourselves that a far larger number of
civilians have been suffering in the internment camps on this side. Let
us not add to their bitterness by unworthy abuse or credulous malice.
Men who, after long confinement for no offence of their own, have tried
to save enemy lives, and find their efforts described as an attempt at
murder, must begin to feel hopeless of justice. Excess of generosity
would be far wiser. The world wants no more missioners of hate. Let us
try to avoiding creating such.
In our own internment camps there was often, even early in the war, an
atmosphere of depression which one worker said "haunted him for days."
The following extract is from the letter of an interned man who showed
quite remarkable courage and fought with considerable success against
depression till the end of 1917. "I refuse to give way to depression,"
he wrote. But in 1918 the strain of useless monotony had become too
great, he became physically ill, and how low hope had fallen the letter
itself shows: "You can't think how good it is to hear you speak with so
much sympathy. I feel sure you understand the dreariness of this life,
the long and fruitless waiting, the nights of anguish--and all the
misery of it, the terrible discontent and the passionate heart
longings.... You don't know how sore it is sometimes about my heart...."
Methods that seem to many of us avoidable contribute also to increase
ill-feeling. I take the following from the _Daily News_ of September,
27, 1918:
Among others, I had my Christmas dinner last year with a German.
At least, his name is German and he was born in Germany. He is
less interested, personally, in those facts than in these, viz.,
that he is an international Socialist and a first class
electrical engineer. For four years he has done extremely
responsible work for a large engineering firm with important
contracts from the M. of M. For four years he has had his
liberty within the usual five-mile radius; for four years the
local police have not found the least fault with him.
Now, thanks to the Northcliffe Intern-them-all-Stunt, he is shut
up in the Isle of Man, and the country has lost the services of
a man who was worth more to us than many Northcliffes.
From a letter which he wrote recently to an English friend I
have copied the following:
As a result of the fact that no German paper is permitted
here in the camp, not even those advocating understanding
nor those critical of the German Government, and practically
no English paper hitherto except those abounding in
Hun-talk, there is still a general feeling here towards
"England" exactly the opposite of what these restrictions
are intended to create--a bitterness and a contempt which
exist side by side with the most violent criticism of the
governing clique of Germany, and with anti-capitalistic,
revolutionary sentiment! So I am exerting myself to make
people realise that, however influential, the Northcliffe
and Allied Press is not "England," and that the best German
papers constantly work for the abatement of hatred and for
genuine reconciliation and co-operation in a League of
Nations.
I am sorry to say that I fear acts of kindness and fairness will be
largely forgotten by the majority of prisoners on both sides. An
Englishman writes to me of his treatment in Germany: "Consideration was
extended in even greater measure to others, yet not one has opened his
mouth to record it. It makes one loathe one's fellow-men." I quote this
because I am sure that neither side must expect fairness of statement
from men so long exposed to so depressing and often petty a constraint.
After all, when we see the war bias of the man who has not suffered at
all, a calm regard for both sides of the case can scarcely be expected
from those who for wasted years have been too often exposed to hardship,
petty tyranny and a kind of barbed annoyance.
NEUTRAL CAMPS.
Even in neutral internment camps, though there the initial hostility is
absent, misery and bitterness may become very great. The following
cable from Rotterdam appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_ of June 13, 1918:
Interned Britishers here are intensely interested in the
British-German Conference at the Hague, in the hope that it may
result in their repatriation. This is especially the case at
Groningen, where the men of the Royal Naval Division, who have
been interned since October, 1914, are getting desperate. The
June number of the camp magazine had two blank pages, which the
editor explains have been censored out because they contained an
account of the recent "hunger demonstration" and "a moderate
record of the general feeling of the camp."
It is in the internment camps everywhere, rather than in the fighting
line, that bitterness sinks into the soul. It will not be remedied by
more bitterness. But if the suffering of these men's stagnant years
helps to strengthen a universal resolve for peace it will not have been
a useless suffering. And peace means understanding by each of the good
in the other.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: Many older men (even those over seventy) were
subsequently interned.]
[Footnote 14: There were 35,000 Germans in Paris alone in 1870,
but though expelled from the Department of the Seine, they were
not interned.]
[Footnote 15: This was emphasised by the German authorities.
See, for instance, Israel Cohen, "The Ruhleben Prison Camp," pp.
21-24.]
[Footnote 16: Cf. pp. 216, 218, etc.]
[Footnote 17: "In this camp, as is usual where civilians are
detained, the atmosphere is one of depression."--Mr. Jackson on
a civilian camp at Senne, Sept. 11, 1915.]
[Footnote 18: "Overseer" seems to be a translation of the German
"Obermann," and represents, I think, the captain of a barrack.]
[Footnote 19: The second list represents members of the Camp
Committee (see further p. 99).]
[Footnote 20: "Barrack" is no doubt meant.]
[Footnote 21: There are a large number of men interned at
Ruhleben who are technically British subjects by reason of their
having been born in British territory of naturalised British
subjects, but who have spent practically all their lives in
Germany.]
[Footnote 22: Cf. the report on Knockaloe (May, 1916) on p.
114.]
[Footnote 23: The original barrack captains were chosen, as an
informant of mine writes, "in a hurry, when things were
chaotic." Dissatisfaction was felt with their action, or
inaction, and a "Camp Committee" was formed of newly elected
representatives of the different barracks, which was, as it
were, to supervise the captains (overseers). The arrangement was
scarcely likely to work, and did not. The election, moreover,
seems to have been but partial.]
[Footnote 24: Cf. p. 115.]
[Footnote 25: One of the difficulties at Newbury was the absence
of light.]
[Footnote 26: A very useful account of Ruhleben is given by
Israel Cohen in "The Ruhleben Prison Camp." In reading such
accounts one must always, however, remember that to complete the
picture we ought to be able to read accounts written by interned
German civilians of their experiences on this side. Such a
consideration should be obvious, but in war the obvious and
reasonable are too often vehemently rejected as "unpatriotic"!]
[Footnote 27: For the mental difference between the civilian and
the military prisoner see page 84.]
[Footnote 28: Compare the letter written by Oscar Levy, M.D.,
from Mürren, Switzerland, which appeared in the _Manchester
Guardian_ of Sept. 4, 1916: "That such grave cases exist the
letters I have been receiving from both sides prove without
doubt." That was _two years ago_.]
[Footnote 29: The earlier reports of the International Red Cross
covered very little of this ground. (See footnote, p. 9.)]
[Footnote 30: Compare Report on Ruhleben, June 3, 1915 (p. 94).]
[Footnote 31: A case is in my mind where a man lost wife and two
children thus. I shall never forget my task of trying to allay
his misery and his bitterness.]
III.
PRISONERS IN PREVIOUS WARS.
SOME PREVIOUS RECORDS.