NINTH CHAPTER
It is Christmas week again—the last Christmas of the war. Two Swiss doctors, appointed by the warring nations to inspect the Internment Camps throughout Europe, have arrived at Knockaloe.
After going the rounds of the five compounds they come to the farm to test the milk. They are pleasant men, and Mona asks them to take tea.
Sitting at the table in the kitchen they talk together, not paying much attention to Mona, of the complaints made by the prisoners, particularly by one of them, who had said he had not been able to eat the potatoes provided because they had been full of maggots, whereupon the sergeant of the guard, who had been showing them round, had cried:
“Don’t believe a word of it—the man’s a liar,” and then the prisoner had said no more.
“I dare say the fellow was lying all right,” says one of the doctors, “but that sergeant is a bit of a beast.”
“Is it like that in all the camps—in Germany, for instance?” asks Mona.
“Worse there than anywhere. Some of the officers in German camps are barbarians without bowels of compassion for anybody, and some of your British prisoners are living the lives of the damned.”
“But that’s the devilish way of war. It seems to make martyrs and heroes of the men who lose by it, and brutes and demons of the men who win.”