It was then that I saw the man who had been making the paper flowers leave his shed and cross the street. Remembering what he had told me that the flowers were made for the chapel, I suggested that we go there. Following the soldier, we found ourselves in an anteroom at one end of a scrupulously clean shed. From the anteroom a door opened into a long unpainted room, at the far end of which I saw a crude altar. I noticed a square of red cloth of some cheap material, half covering the wall, and against this, in white and gold relief stood different figures of worship, candles, crucifixes, a host covered with a roughly cut piece of the same red muslin, and surmounting it all, high on the wall, an Almighty crown.
I saw the soldier with the flowers enter by a distant door and give them to the priests. When the priest handed him a plain vase and let him fill it himself, the soldier seemed ready to cry out with happiness. Silently the three figures at the altar went about their devotions. Again the door opened, a line of prisoners appeared, walking on tip-toe, their rough boots creaking; they filed across the room, and making two lines before the altar, dropped on their knees, their lips moving in a monotonous monotone of prayer. Rising, they tip-toed out and another file came in, and among them the vivid garments of a Turco. Making a sign to the Captain, I left the chapel. Presently they brought the Turco to me. He could speak French. I asked him why he had turned Christian and he said something to the effect that he had seen the way to the one real religion. He was explaining volubly about his conversion just before a battle in France, when the Captain pulled off the Turco's fez and grabbed a little braided pigtail concealed beneath.
"Christian, eh?" laughed the Captain. "What are you still wearing that thing for, then?"
The Turco began to grin.
"This religion," he said, "makes it pleasant among the Frenchmen, and then when I get home—well, how can I be a good Mohammedan without this?" and lovingly he patted his braided hair.
Prisoners of war? Are they ill or well treated? I leave my reader to judge the facts. I have tried to give you accurate pictures of the varied camps, typical of the German system. Of the camps in England and France, I do not know; of the camps in Russia no man knows. To silence the stories of ill-treatment that official press bureaus intermittently produce, why not apply a remedy?
Why not standardize the prison camps? As it is a task for humanitarians why should not the suggestions come from Switzerland, the home of the Red Cross, with the tacit understanding and backing up of the United States. A standard set of prison camp recommendations could be drafted recommending certain quantities and kinds of food, certain conditions for sleeping quarters, certain limitations to the enforced labor. The old Geneva document is out of date; its compilers could not foresee a World War; no nation to-day could meet its recommendations; the problem of handling prisoners of war has become too vast.