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THE PRISONERS

A Vile feature of German "frightfulness" is this: that she mixes poison with her prisoners' rations. Not content with starving their bodies, she hides truth from them and floods their minds with lies. Those in command—officers, educated men, claiming the service of their soldiers and civil guard and the respect of their nation—deliberately hash a daily meal of falsehood and serve up German victories and triumphs on land and sea as sauce to the starvation diet of their defenceless captives.

In the earlier months of the war, while yet the spiritual slough into which Germany had sunk was unguessed, and the mixture of child and devil exemplified by "frightfulness" continued unfathomed, these daily lies undoubtedly answered their cowardly purpose, cast down the spirit of thousands, and added another pang to their captivity. But our armies know better now, and those diminishing numbers likely to be taken prisoner in the future see the end more clearly than the foe can. Lies will be met with laughter henceforth, for our enemies have put themselves beyond the pale. They may starve and insult our bodies; but their power to poison our brains has passed from them forever. We know them at last. They have spun a web of barbed villainy between their souls and ours; and the evil committed for one foul purpose alone—to terrify free men and break the spirit of the sons of liberty—has produced results far different and created a situation more terrible for them than for their outraged enemies.

For in this matter of misrepresentation and lying, born of Prussia and by her spoon-fed pack of martinets, professors, and Churchmen, mingled with Germany's daily bread for a generation, it is she and not we who will reap the whirlwind of that sowing; it is she and not we who must soon pant and tear the breast in the pangs of the poison.

Between the mad and the sane there can be only one victor; and when the time comes, may Germany's robe of repentance be a strait-waistcoat of the Allies' choosing. For she has drunk deep of the poison, and those who anticipate a speedy cure will be as mad as she. When the escaped tigress is back in her cage, men look to the bars, for none wants a second mauling.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.