excitement in Boche circles when the first batch of parcels bearing postmarks of a later date to that of the first day of the unlimited submarine campaign arrived in the camp. This did not look a all like a complete blockade of England!

After careful thought a satisfactory explanation was forthcoming from the "under officer." "Of course the English postal authorities must have faked the postmarks in order to cause these very misgivings to arise in the minds of true Germans"! Again he and his satellites were able to look on the bright side of things. But not for long did their joy last. The steady stream of incoming parcels continued and joy gave way to sulkiness and then disillusionment in the minds of those Germans who saw with their own eyes. Depend upon it these men told others what they had seen and so it spread. All the same they still imagined, in May, 1917, that we had far less food in England than was really the case.

Talking about food reminds me of the behaviour of the Crefeld children when we prisoners went out for walks on parole. Although undoubtedly brought up upon ideas of hate against England, and presumably thoroughly informed of the odious natures of all Englishmen, these children very soon forgot their lessons and rapidly became great friends with the prisoners—English, Russians, French, Belgians and Arabs alike. Of course to a certain extent their behaviour was due to their hopes of getting odd bits of chocolate or a biscuit or two from their enemy friends. It was not unusual to see the "Walk," generally consisting of about forty prisoners, returning with a crowd of kids of all kinds and description hanging on to its edges. Their usual practice was to get hold of a prisoner's hand and trot beside him, asking sometimes for chocolate and occasionally for old tennis balls.

These children's disregard of the attitude, which the war lord has decided must be displayed against the English, was not allowed to continue unchecked. I expect the children were the subject of a special army order, as they suddenly ceased to join us in our walks, and the usual crowd of urchins who stood for hours in the road outside the barracks in the hopes of having something thrown out to them, were chased from their points of vantage and silence once more reigned in the one time noisy road.

On special occasions the schools were given holidays by orders from headquarters. A victory or the occupation of a town was always commemorated in this way. On these occasions, the headmaster or mistress would march the school past our prison and order the kids to sing patriotic songs. We always laughed at them, and the girls would sometimes forget to sing and would wave their handkerchiefs to us instead, causing their bear-leaders to get wild with rage. Eventually when the Germans got tired of victories and wanted food instead, their holidays ceased and we no longer had to listen to shrill voices shrieking "Die Wacht am Rhein" or "Deutschland über Alles," time after time ad nauseam.

It was extraordinary how the feelings of the German people changed towards us while at Crefeld. At first nothing was too bad to say or do to the captives of the Kultur nation, but it is marvellous what a good blood-letting and perpetual food shortage has done for them. So tame did they get that our windows, at first only open at the very top and all covered with white paint, were eventually made so that one could sit and look out quite easily. No fist shaking or gestures of hate were made by the time the windows were allowed open, so prisoners and Boche civilians simply stared at each other quite peaceably.

There was one thing that specially worried us in the camp. By some means or other all attempts to escape by digging tunnels were discovered. Although the foundations of the prison buildings were literally honey-combed with tunnels and attempts were made without number, never once did one succeed.

Most ingenious efforts were made, but despite the most rigid secrecy and the utmost caution, sooner or later in would come a search party and go straight to the scene of the excavation and often catch the diggers red-handed. It was believed that there were spies among the prisoners; at any rate everything that went on was known in the commandant's office sooner or later. The members of one party on being caught were actually complimented on their fine work by the Boches, who were full of joy naturally at having found the tunnel.

For many months before we left Crefeld the Germans used to search the ground floor rooms and cellars daily. Not infrequently they would pay two or three visits to the cellars in one night. Their searching included tapping the walls, ceilings and floors for hollow places. Periodically a search for the earth excavated from these holes and hidden away, would lead to the Boches discovering many hundredweights of sand and rubble stowed away safely.

Searches were sometimes made in our rooms for articles of contraband. Civilian clothes, and maps, compasses and various tools were the chief objects of interest to them. These searches on some occasions were extended to the persons of the prisoners, especially after an order forbidding the possession of real German money had been issued. Of course none of us liked being searched and we showed our searchers pretty clearly what we thought of the whole affair. I must say that the commandant did not order many searches and probably those that did occur were due to the orders of a superior.

These searches were usually carried out by the under-officers and men of a different unit from that which guarded the camp, in order to prevent those who were quite friendly to us among the prison guards letting us off too lightly.

During 1915 we were all inoculated and vaccinated against a number of diseases. In all we were each punctured seven times. Many prisoners objected to these measures and did their utmost to avoid being done. The German authorities caught the majority and treated them to these unpleasant attentions however.

The inoculation was a comic sight. One after the other the prisoners filed past the doctors, who worked automatically at their pricking job. It often was a case of almost leather punching when the tough skins of some of the rougher types of prisoners had to be pierced. The needles were far from sharp, and I believe had to be constantly changed.

Small parties of prisoners were constantly leaving and arriving at the camp. This was done, so it was generally thought, to let the people see prisoners being taken about and make them imagine that the German armies were always taking new batches.

New arrivals from the front were sometimes brought in, and we would generally worry the lives out of them for their first few days, asking for news of all kinds. Hardly ever were they able to tell us anything we did not know from the newspapers, but it often happened that all sorts of wild rumours arose from the remarks of fellows who were simply badgered into saying things they did not really mean or had not thought over thoroughly.

Early in the Spring of 1917 the Germans brought a hundred odd mercantile marine officers and men from Karlsruhe to our camp at Crefeld, with what object nobody rightly knew. These men had been through a very bad time and were very pleased to get to a camp where there were English army officers. The majority of them had been captured by the Moewe, and some of them had been in her for weeks while she cruised about sinking other ships. They had been half-starved and had very little clothing with them. In several cases the