The German in charge of the ward was a university professor, and, seeing several of our men, also Russians and Rumanians, come on to the hospital in an emaciated condition, I asked him the cause, and where they came from, when, without giving me details, he told me they came from working camps behind the lines. There, he said, the conditions were frightful, so much so that he himself was ashamed of them—the men were overworked, under shellfire, very much underfed, had not much clothing, and slept in sheds and shelters in the snow under filthy conditions. I ascertained from him and from some of our own men that many died behind the lines; all were thoroughly ill-treated by the Germans, and the lives of those who did not die were made quite unbearable.
I am sure the German who informed me had no personal grounds which made him complain against the system, it was merely on humanitarian grounds that he told me he was shocked; and the independent stories I received from our own soldiers simply bore out the fact that the Germans were ill-treating their prisoners behind the lines at this time. While I was in hospital the German I have mentioned above did his best to get the men from the hospital marked unfit for work behind the lines; and I must in fairness add that as a result very few, if any, went back to work there once they had been sent to hospital, and they seemed to be marked for camps in Germany instead.
American Prisoners Exploited
A correspondent sent the following from The Hague, April 20, 1918, regarding the German treatment of American prisoners:
From irrefutable evidence obtained by your correspondent, it is impossible to close one's eyes to what is going on in the hospitals and prisoners' camps in Germany. It is a mistake to believe that the treatment of prisoners and wounded in Germany has improved. On the contrary, it is as bad as it ever was, even worse.
The punishments inflicted are cruel and inhuman. As is well known, prisoners are absolutely dependent upon parcels for food and clothing. A favorite punishment is to withhold these from a whole camp or from large bodies of prisoners. It has been established beyond doubt that prisoners are employed behind the front and are under shellfire, in defiance of The Hague agreement of 1917.
Some prisoners never reach a camp in Germany for six months, meanwhile receiving no parcels of food. Their condition on arrival at camp, broken down and starving, is pitiable.
The evidence doesn't tend to show that American prisoners are receiving any preferential treatment. It is reported that the first American prisoners taken were hawked about the country, presumably to show them off to the populace. At Giessen, where, it would seem, American prisoners were kept on two separate occasions, they were prohibited any intercourse, even by sign language, with other prisoners and were not allowed to receive parcels or gifts from them.
British prisoners at Giessen asked if they could give parcels to Americans, and finally received permission to do so the following day. But the next day the American prisoners were moved away early in the morning.