Men behind the lines had suffered far more, this officer considered. This is somewhat at variance with the extract last cited. The writer continues:
But the lot of the prisoners in the permanent camps in Baden was much brighter. My authority for saying so is an old Roman Catholic priest, Father Nugent, a native of Lancashire, I believe, who was in Southern Germany when the war broke out. He had free access to all prison camps and hospitals in Baden, and had no stories of harsh and brutal treatment to tell. Two American doctors were allowed to visit the hospitals in Rastatt, Lazaret 4, and the Russenlager Hospital. They said that the patients were comfortable and well looked after, in spite of the great shortage of medical supplies in Germany.
Some of the soldiers had a good time working on the Baden farms. One orderly at our camp, who was away for a fortnight in the fruit season, picking plums, told me that he had met one of his old regiment working on a farm. This man had just driven in to the railway station for the Red Cross parcels, and told him that they were working with an old German and his wife. They shared rations with each other, and once a week the whole household visited the cinema.
Delay in repatriation occurred owing to disorganisation.
But there is no ill feeling towards the prisoners in Baden. After the armistice we wandered at will round Freiburg and in the Black Forest; and everyone was treated with civility. There were no cases of open hostility at all.
(Daily News, Dec. 18, 1918.)
Mr. G. G. Desmond volunteered at the age of 46. He was taken prisoner and gave (Daily News, Dec. 10, 1918) some account of his general outlook after his imprisonment. Unlike some of the stay-at-homes he can still believe in the German people, as the following concluding paragraphs of his article show:
The soldiers and the country people round Dülmen, and afterwards everybody we met in those parts, expressed no sense of rancour at their defeat, and simply leapt over it all to the prime, joyful fact that the Krieg was fertig. Everybody greeted you with that, and covered his face with smiles thereby. Some said that the terms were very hard, but agreed with me when I told them that they were made hard in order to defeat thoroughly the old gang and ensure a lasting peace. I wish I felt as certain now as then that the Allies had that clean intention. One farmer chuckled when he told me that Germany must give up a hundred and fifty U-boats, because, he said, she had no such number.
One of the political parties, I am afraid I cannot remember which, published a manifesto stating that Germany had been deceived and betrayed by the military party, whereby among other things she inflicted great wrongs on Belgium and the Allies, and that she must pay in full for those wrongs. I do not doubt that is a widespread feeling in Germany. If, however, the terms of peace are to be vindictive, we shall in turn be in the wrong, and the new Germany may have better cause than the old to hate us.
When we were fighting the Kaiser, we took pains to tell the German people that we were fighting their battle against their enemies. We were, in fact, liberating the traditional distressed damsel from the clutches of the ogre. It was a pity that so many of our blows fell upon the damsel and not on the ogre. It would be not only a pity but a crime and a grievous blunder if, now that the damsel is free, we proceeded to thrash her for the faults of the ogre.