A Contradiction.
The following is important and I quote it in full. Mr. Osborne to Mr. Gerard. (February 23, 1916) (l.c. p. 62.):
In accordance with your instructions and with reference to the article in the London Times of February 7, stating the report of an exchanged British prisoner of war that two British prisoners at the detention camp at Güstrow, in Mecklenburg, had been bayonetted for smoking in a forbidden vicinity, and that one had died and the other was still in hospital, I have the honour to inform you that I visited the camp at Güstrow on February 12, 1916. I did not notify the camp authorities of my arrival. I was shown every courtesy and received every facility for speaking to the British prisoners out of earshot of the Germans. I talked with a large number of British non-commissioned officers and with some of the men, and all were unanimous on two points; first, that if such an occurrence as the one mentioned had taken place, they would certainly have heard of it; and, second, that they had heard of no such occurrence. I visited the lazaret, through which I was taken by a British N.C.O., who is an assistant in caring for the sick, and spoke to every British patient under treatment there, not one of whom could possibly have been suffering from a bayonet wound. It seems to me quite out of the question that the occurrence mentioned in the English newspaper accounts could have actually taken place at Güstrow.
In point of fact, instead of complaints at Güstrow, I heard rather praise of the camp from the British interned there, and praise of the British prisoners from the camp authorities. The men were all well fitted out with clothes of all sorts, and seemed particularly cheerful. The authorities stated that it had never been necessary, in recent times at least, to place a British prisoner under arrest. On the whole, the camp struck me as being as nearly ideal as it is possible for a place of detention of this kind to be.
The discrepancy between the last sentence in Mr. Osborne’s report and the Times article is a striking one. It should give one pause in placing too much reliance upon untested accusations, or upon newspaper articles based upon them. We forget sometimes that all the bias is against an enemy, and the only stories likely to be free from exaggeration are those told in his favour.