"Oh, please, please, come!..."
"Goggle-eyes" lost no time in coming, showed assiduous attention to the patient, punctured her, and rode on a bicycle to Marle in order to fetch medicines. A few days after, a poor emigrant, mother of six small children, was attacked by the same disease. He was sent for in vain; and left her forty-eight hours without help. It was indeed a miracle that she did not depart this life.
This proves clearly that to the mind of a German, even though he be a Sozial-Democrat, the skin of a capitalist will ever be superior to the skin of a starveling.
The physician was not our sole caller. A few other ones came when the straw was still clean, and when we received a pound of bread a day. A stout commandant, and three days after, a thin commandant came to visit the camp. Both the stout and the thin looked extremely well satisfied, and seemed to say:
"What splendid organisation! How perfectly everything is getting on! Really, nobody but Germans could settle things like that!"
The thin commandant was escorted by the official interpreter of the camp. He never asked a question of the people, for many reasons, the principal being that he did know the language of Voltaire. The very first day he had given a sample of his talents by asking a youth:
"Hé ... vous ... combien hannées vous havoir?"
And the boy, stretching his legs and hands, stood there gazing, gaping at his interlocutor, and his whole countenance answered:
"I don't understand German!"
Therefore mimicry and loud cries bore a great part in the relations between soldiers and emigrants.