[27] For the mental difference between the civilian and the military prisoner see page [84].
[28] Compare the letter written by Oscar Levy, M.D., from Mürren, Switzerland, which appeared in the Manchester Guardian of Sept. 4, 1916: “That such grave cases exist the letters I have been receiving from both sides prove without doubt.” That was two years ago.
[29] The earlier reports of the International Red Cross covered very little of this ground. (See [footnote], p. [9].)
[30] Compare Report on Ruhleben, June 3, 1915 (p. [94]).
[31] A case is in my mind where a man lost wife and two children thus. I shall never forget my task of trying to allay his misery and his bitterness.
III.
PRISONERS IN PREVIOUS WARS.
Some Previous Records.
The suffering of prisoners has been great enough, God knows, yet if we are to help the future we must try to see even this, amongst the other terrible facts, in its proper perspective. The imprisonment of resident enemy nationals has certainly been a most unfortunate step backwards—unfortunate even if we regard it as inevitable.[32] Yet we must recognise that far more solicitude has been shown as to prisoners than was the case in most earlier wars, and this though prisoners have never been taken on so large a scale, and though there has probably never been greater embitterment. It will be useful to cite a few previous records.
Napoleonic Wars.
I quote once more from Dr. Spaight’s work, where much information may be found in a condensed form. “A hundred years ago, England, while she prayed in her national liturgy for all prisoners and captives, had no compunction about confining the French prisoners of war in noisome hulks and feeding them on weevily biscuits, salt junk and jury rum, which sowed the seed for a plentiful harvest of scurvy, dysentery and typhus.” (“War Rights on Land,” p. 265.)