In Austria no general internment order was made. The Daily Chronicle correspondent, writing in January, 1915, from Vienna, spoke of the freedom of all foreigners there, even when the subjects of enemy Governments. All such subjects, his host reminded him, “enjoy full, or nearly full liberty, whereas in Great Britain and France Austro-German subjects have either been clapped into prison, or at any rate confined in a camp or barracks.”
Civilian and Military Prisoners Compared.
“Confinement in a camp or barracks” sounds a small thing. It is really, wherever it occurs, a rather terrible thing. The universal experience is that civilians suffer under this restraint more than soldiers, and consequently are more “difficult” to deal with.[17] There are, I think, various fairly obvious reasons for this difference. To the soldier the prison camp is an escape from worse horrors, the soldier is inured to a large measure of monotony, he is also inured to military control and certain peculiarities of the military manner. To the civilian the prison camp is a change from freedom to confinement, from comfort to hardship, often from prosperity to ruin. The civilian’s life has been one of varied activities, and becomes one of almost unrelieved monotony. He is in most cases quite unused to military control, and feels himself degraded to a kind of servitude. Used to a separate and individual life, he is forced into contact, day and night, with others not of his own choice, and often antipathetic to him. He finds himself deprived of every vestige of privacy, and his thoughts revolve often round chances gone, work lost, hopes vanished, a wife living in penury, and a future altogether dark. If anyone will try to picture such a life continued not for weeks or months only, but for years, he will, I think, feel that hysteria, loss of mental balance and actual insanity are consequences that are only too likely to follow.
Civilian control for civilian prisoners seems in general to be desirable. Military control was practically withdrawn from Ruhleben in the autumn of 1915. At a few camps here, such as the one at Cornwallis Road, it is practically absent, and I feel this is one reason why, writing in March, 1916, the U.S. Attaché was able to report that there had at this camp been no attempts at escape.
There was much that was harsh and bad in the earlier days of internment in Germany, but the official U.S. reports certainly make us aware of cordial German co-operation in improving matters. The unofficial account, moreover, of Dr. Cimino (“Behind the Prison Bars in Germany”) astonishes me chiefly by the amount of politeness which it reveals in the German official.
There will always be stupid officials, and complete military authority is a very dangerous thing. This obvious conclusion should be recognised as applying (to some extent at least) to both sides. It is a rather dreadful thing to be under more or less hostile restraint, whether one be German or British. “Even if ideal conditions prevailed, one could not remove the unavoidable feeling of restraint and the sorrow of separation of men from their wives and families. There is in all the camps a feeling of gloom which one visitor said ‘haunted him for days.’ It is scarcely surprising that feelings of resentment should arise. Many of the men have lived in this country for twenty or thirty years; some have come over here as young children, some are even unable to speak German; very many have married British wives and have come to regard themselves as citizens of this country. The visit of someone who is not in authority over them, but who will listen to their troubles and give them a kind word of encouragement, has done very much to lighten the bitterness of confinement.” So write the Emergency Committee in their second report on their work for the assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in distress. Dr. Siegmund Schulze, who has worked for a similar organisation in Berlin, writes: “It appears that those who have recently expressed their opinion in the British Parliament have taken the complaints of a few dissatisfied prisoners as a basis for their general opinion. We can quite understand these complaints, because we notice among all prisoners that the longer the imprisonment lasts, the greater is the feeling of dissatisfaction.... It is noteworthy that in the English utterance even the trustworthiness of neutral reports is doubted; for example, the statements of the American Ambassador are regarded as pro-German, therefore distorted. Frl. Dr. Rotten and I have heard a great number of neutral opinions on the prisoners camps; I have myself discussed the conditions of the detention camp with neutrals who have visited them, and ascertained the truth as to their reports. Our verdict can only be that there is absolutely no question of any conditions which would constitute an infringement of international law, or which could imperil the health of the soldiers.... Moreover, I have in Ruhleben formed my own opinion as to the condition of the prisoners. I acknowledge that the depressed state of mind in which the prisoners must naturally be after more than six months’ imprisonment has an effect upon their reports, and that many prisoners are in a state of suppressed rage. On the other hand I cannot but say that after the removal of certain insanitary conditions there have been absolutely no substantial complaints made by the prisoners. Much as I regret the position of the prisoners, among whom I have many personal acquaintances, I must, on the other hand, say that the accommodation and also the behaviour of the officers is, on the whole, as humane as possible under the difficult conditions. The American Attaché, Mr. Jackson, who formerly visited the detention camps in England, and has now again visited the German detention camps, has confirmed to me the assertion which he made to the Commandant of the Ruhleben Camp, viz., that if he were obliged to choose where, among the countries now at war, he would be interned, he would certainly choose Ruhleben.... Without doubt, as is now apparent everywhere, an imprisonment extending over a long period, say, for instance, a year, means far more for men of the present generation than one could have thought. I consider it possible that many prisoners who are detained for such a long time will return to their homes with an essential deterioration of their mental condition.” These last are very grave, and indeed terrible words, words that I fear only too accurately represent the facts, but yet, as Dr. Schulze continues, “We ought not to conclude from this that we are justified in making reproaches against the other country in respect of the treatment of prisoners, but rather conclude that we should work energetically towards the termination of the war.”
The mental suffering (stagnant suffering) caused to civilian prisoners (in Britain, as elsewhere) is, I fear, very far from being understood. The following few sentences may give some glimpses—I was going to say “enlightening glimpses,” but, alas, they are only glimpses into the darkness: “Our visitors in talking to the men in the camps receive from them many kinds of requests; of these by far the most frequent and urgent is that their wives and families may be visited. For one reason or another, letters from home very frequently do not reach the prisoners, and often for weeks or months together they receive no word of their families.” The report goes on: “One man’s wife was at the point of death when he left her and her young children; another’s wife with several children was addicted to drink, and was only kept from it by her husband’s influence; in other cases children were left behind with no mother to care for them.” (The quotations are from the second report of the Friends’ Emergency Committee, January, 1915.) To imagine the anguish of these cases, whether in Germany or in Britain, is to shrink as from a blow. Many will feel that the policy of general internment was unavoidable. But we may surely show generous sympathy where an unavoidable policy has brought great misery upon thousands who were innocent. Such sympathy, as we shall see later, always assists reciprocal sympathy on the other side.
Some Reports on Ruhleben.
I will now turn to the consideration of reports on individual camps for civilians. The most important German civilian camp, of course, for us, is that of Ruhleben. If I cite a Report on the Meeting of the Camp Committee held there on February 4, 1915, a good deal as to the general management of the camp will become plain. [Miscel. No. 7 (1915) p. 67.]
The following minutes of a meeting of the select committee of the camp committee and of the overseers,[18] which was called by Baron von Taube on February 2, were read by the Secretary: