It has never occurred to us that Germany has in her midst men who hold the trade secrets of our empire, and is learning them day by day by the employment of our men in her industries.
If we neglect this problem any longer we may find that when the world resumes its normal trade activity Germany, on this point at any rate, will have scored a commercial victory.
The nations of the world are at war. But the armies of to-day are civilian armies, comprising men of industrial and commercial education, and the prisoners of to-day are men of commercial and industrial value.
Our adversaries have been quick to recognise this. We seem to be still imbued with the idea that the German soldier in our midst is simply a fighting machine!
So he is. But when the time came for the civilian to take up arms and supplement the professional fighting force, there fell into our hands an industrial fighting machine in the guise of a military prisoner.
We have the impression that a military prisoner is an individual whose one desire is to escape and jump at our throats; and that the safety of the nation compels us to stand over him with a bayonet and regard his every movement with suspicion.
Yes, I do not deny that a very large number of prisoners in our midst would be glad to get back to their homeland, especially if there was no further prospect of having to face the British in the firing-line. But keep a man idle for months behind barbed wire, like an animal in a cage, and you encourage his desire to escape far more than if you diverted his mind by industrial employment.
Have we not a barbed wire supplied by nature completely surrounding our country? Are we not on an island?
I had many opportunities of talking with our men in Germany and of gaining information as to the manner in which the German authorities were taking advantage of the problem we avoid, or occupy our time in idle discussion.
I will take one concrete example. In Hameln Lager the commandant has charge of 50,000 prisoners, of which 30,000 are "living out"! They are working out in commandos on the farms, in the factories, in the workshops; in large batches, small batches, and even singly.