Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1918 — TREAT CAPTIVE GERMANS KINDLY [ARTICLE]

TREAT CAPTIVE GERMANS KINDLY

French Generous, to Prisoners De- ' spite Brutal Course of Enemy. ME GLAD TO BE OUT OF IT Sight of Long American Columns Destroys Hun Hopes of Victory—Live Like Happy Family In Prison Camp. With the American Forces in France. —France knows that her prisoners in Germany are treated badly, but German prisoners are treated humanely and even generously in French prisons just the same, writes Don Martin in . the . New York Herald. I asked ah officer in charge of a French prison camp why this is, and he shrugged his shoulders and said merely: “Ah!” Unless one could see the gesture accompanying the monosyllable ,he would hardly know what meaning to attach to it It really meant: “Oh, what’s the use of being brutal to individuals just because some one else is? We wish we could, but we can’t” I hav6 Inspected several prisons, some large and some small, and in every one I have found the Germans treated quite as well as civil prisoners in normal times and in many Instances better. Officers are not humiliated in 'any way. In fact they receive better treatment, a stranger would /think, than they are really entitled to. Prisoners Live Happily. On a low hill about 1,000 feet from a main road of France stands a prison —five low wooden buildings surrounded by two barbed wire fences, with armed pickets always patrolling outside. Here are 200 Germans, many of them prisoners taken in the early battle of the Somme, but some taken more recently. They are all privates and constitute as happy a family as one could find where personal liberty is the one thing desired and denied. The Germans stood at their barbed fenced hours at a time and watched the endless line of soldiers. When It was the blue of France that was moving past the Germans were not particularly interested’. They had seen that for years. They know France always has had an endless line of everything needed for war. But when they saw the khaki of America filing or rolling by for a whole day and then for another, and heard the muddy shuffle of feet through the night, there was a change in the dull expression of those German eyes. It was at this time that I went to the prison to learn what they thought of what they had seen. First it should be stated that these prisoners see little of recent developments in the war. They must form their opinions from ruch fragments of conversation as they hear from their keepers

and from what they see, as, for instance, from the long, long line of Americans, the first they had seen. In this particular prison the new* comers had brought the news situation up to early spring, but as for the big offensive the prisoners knew only that there probably would be one. Americans Surprise Germans. When I asked if there was a German among the two hundred who could speak English, a good looking young man, with a typical Teutonic mustache, red cheeks, a glow of health, was called out He stepped into my presence like an automaton, clicked his heels together and saluted the French captain. He told me he was a private; that he has a home in Lucerne, Switzerland; that he fought eight months, but was never wounded; that he is in the wholesale dry goods business In Berlin, and that he does business with John Wanamaker, Marshall Field and Stern Brothers. “What do you think of all the Americans you have seen pasr ng here recently?” I asked him. “I have seen many Americans,” he

said. “I was surprised that you have ao many in France.” Another prisoner, less prepossessing in appearance than the first, was asked about things in general. He spoke English poorly. ‘ r “I live in Berlin and work in a bank, but was in the war for two years. When the war is over I am going to Switzerland to live. I would go to America, but they don’t like Germans over there any more.” "Why are you going to leave Germany?” For an answer there was a shrug of shoulders and a half scowl, half smile. “Are you satisfied here?” "It’s a lot better than being in a grate where a lot of them are.”