Russian Prisoners Coming Out of the Louse Disinfecting Place.
At Circus Busch last winter a great spectacular play was produced and as five hundred supers were needed for the show, men were taken from the prison camps to take part. There were English, French, Arabs and Turcos, all dressed in their own uniforms, but some of the prisoners had to take the part of German soldiers. They were dressed in the regular German uniform and they looked rather sheepish. Of course in the play the Germans won all of the battles, but there was a waiting list of prisoners who wanted jobs in the show. They were paid one mark a night. The theater management was responsible for the safety of the prisoners, and the theater was well guarded.
Two of the most interesting camps in Germany are the two near Berlin, the one at Zossen and that for the English at Ruhleben. The camp at Zossen is about an hour's ride from Berlin and can be seen from the train window on the way to Dresden. It is built in the open country and is a town of small houses. They have all kinds of prisoners here.
The "Gentlemen's Camp" at Ruhleben is where the English civil prisoners are interned, and some very rich and influential men are here. Ruhleben is built on a race track, and though at first it had only a few buildings, it is now a small town. It has its main streets, its shops, its restaurants, its reading rooms, its select circle and its four hundred. It had a theater, the director of which was the director of one of the Berlin theaters before the war.
French Prisoners Going into the City to Make Purchases.
They have a newspaper printed in Ruhleben. The German authorities do not allow these papers to be sent out of the camp, but I was lucky enough to have seen one of them. An English girl I knew in Berlin got one of them from the German wife of a Ruhleben prisoner. I had to swear that while I was in Germany I would never tell I had seen it. It was a very neat little sheet with stories, poems and advertisements—no news. The advertisements were for the different shops and stores in Ruhleben. Some of the men interned there carry on trades, and I saw advertisements for printing, clothes-pressing and tailoring.
At Ruhleben they have what they call their "university," and here they have classes in languages, art and science, and for the colored prisoners they have the common school branches. All these benefits were not gotten up by the Germans, but by the prisoners themselves. The men are allowed to spend only a certain amount of money each month, which keeps down the gambling, but they are allowed to buy what furniture they wish.
Englishmen on Their Way to Ruhleben, November, 1915.