On the right of the British line

by Gilbert Nobbs

I met one man who had been employed alone in a wheelwright's shop. He was a wheelwright by trade. How many wheelwrights' shops are there in England which could do to-day with one of the wheelwrights we are keeping idle behind barbed wire?

What information did that man's employer gain by the way the work was done? How simple the method of obtaining the labour: simply go to the labour bureau attached to the imprisonment camp nearest to your workshop, and ask for a wheelwright. You keep your industry going, and thus in the only practical way keep open the job for the man who is called to the colours.

The employer pays the man no wages, but the local trade-union rate of wage is paid to the commandant who supplies him. Thirty thousand prisoners from a single camp contributing to the industry of the nation, and the wages of 30,000 prisoners contributing to the cost of the war. The prisoner receives through the commandant 30 pfennigs (3d.) per day, and is glad of the employment.

A very large number of prisoners are employed as agricultural labourers, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that all the food supplied to the prisoners, such as it is, is grown by prisoner labour.

I was told by men who had worked on farms that they were compelled to work from 4 in the morning until 9 at night. In some cases only one or two were employed on small farms.

I asked those men why they did not embrace the opportunity to make their escape. But they said that while the work was hard they preferred it; as they lived with the farmer, who treated them well if they worked well. They ate at the farmer's table, and had no non-commissioned officers to bully them; whereas, if they attempted to escape and were caught they would be sent to work in the mines or other equally unpopular task.

Large numbers are employed in the sugar-refineries, coal-mines, and salt-mines, the latter task being the most dreaded; for with the food they were given their health broke down within a few months.

The English prisoner said that when the party he was with first arrived at the mine and saw what they had to do they refused to work. Their guard thereupon threatened them, and when they still refused they were taken outside one by one, and the remainder would hear a shot fired, and then another would be taken out.

It was a fake. The men could not be intimidated, and they were sent back to the Lager.

It was on another occasion that the man I am referring to was put to work in the mine.