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Great Britain has always been contemptuously described by our commercial rivals as a nation of shop-keepers, and in Ruhleben Camp we offered our German authorities, right under their very noses, the most powerful illustration of this national characteristic, and brought home to them very conclusively the fact that our national trait is no empty claim.
Owing to the failure of Germany and Great Britain to come to an agreement for a long time as to the release of captured crews of ships, there were in Ruhleben men as old as seventy-five years and boys as young as fifteen. There were in all between fifty and sixty of these ships' boys.
We were compelled to spend the evening in miserable silence or to crawl into bed to muse over our unhappy lot. So far as Ruhleben was concerned, the sentiment of "Good-will to all men" had sped by on the main line, and had forgotten all about us poor wretches in the siding.
They indubitably served as a powerful illustration of how prisoners could make themselves comfortable. They were held up far and wide throughout Ruhleben as a pattern for all others to copy. One and all of us would willingly have emulated this attractive model if we had possessed the money to spend upon luxuries! Barrack No. 2 is the domicile of the élite and wealthy of Ruhleben.
Yet there was liberty beyond, escape from this dreary Ruhleben with its monotonous routine, with its bullying Commandant and guards, with its sordid surroundings, and its sorry accommodation and short commons.
Not that such boastings disgusted the unhappy people interned at Ruhleben, for it did them good in those days of depression to hear a man a robust man such as this individual proud of his birth, and still possessed of sufficient spirit to glory in it, to draw comparisons between himself, his French, his Belgian, and his Japanese fellow-prisoners, and Germans in general, The man's swagger, in fact, delighted them, and helped to bolster up the fading spirits of many an unfortunate captive in the camp of many a man, who, but for the jibes and uncomplimentary remarks of this robust prisoner, would long since have given up hope and have subsided into melancholy.
I discussed the question involved with two representatives from the Foreign Office, two from the General Staff, two from the War Department and with Count Schwerin who commanded the civilian camp at the Ruhleben race track.
The commander of this civilian camp of Ruhleben was a very handsome old gentleman, named Count Schwerin. His second in command for a long time was a Baron Taube. Both of these officers had been long retired from the army and were given these prison commands at the commencement of the war. Both of them were naturally kind-hearted but curiously sensitive and not always of even temper.
"And you listen for a moment," said Henri, speaking swiftly. "A party of Germans from Ruhleben have just reached the farm, and I met them face to face. I thought they would have recognized me, for amongst them was one whom I remember to have seen doing sentry duty; but I'm such a scarecrow in these clothes, and so dishevelled, that they took me for some farm hand or village lout, and let me pass.
"Now I'll return and set a search in progress. Without doubt the three men who broke out of Ruhleben have paid you a visit; for we know already that they went to a farm farther back along the road and obtained supplies of food.
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