although this was bound in the circumstances to lead to an excessive amount of illness. This policy was quite deliberate. Mr. Gerard, the American ambassador to Germany, in 1915 raised the question with the German authorities with regard to officers, and reported: “I was told that this was a political move ordered for the purpose of showing to the French, British, Belgian and Russian officers that they were not natural Allies.” The commandant of the Gardelegen camp tried to enforce the observance of this regulation during the height of the typhus epidemic at that camp, but his direct order was deliberately disobeyed by the British doctors, with excellent results.
Though this policy did not produce any ill effects upon the health of the prisoners in the officers' camps in Germany, its results, assisted by the insanitary condition of many of them, were disastrous in the main men's camps. Typhus is endemic in Russia, and the Russian prisoners, herded together with those of other nationalities, spread the disease till in some camps appalling epidemics were produced. At Ohdruf, Langensalza, Zerbst, Wittenberg and Gardelegen the fever raged with great virulence. At Wittenberg the camp was overcrowded and insanitary, the washing arrangements were nothing more than troughs in the open, which, with the supply pipes, were during the hard winter of 1914 frequently frozen. In these circumstances, a serious epidemic broke out in Dec. 1914. As soon as this was recognized, the whole German staff, military and medical, left, and never came inside again till Aug. 1915, by which time all the patients were convalescent. For his services in combating the epidemic Dr. Aschenbach, the German principal medical officer, received the Iron Cross. Many Allied and British medical officers had been improperly detained in Germany after their capture, and were dispatched to take the place of the German doctors, who (it is charitable to believe, in obedience to superior orders) had deserted their charges. In Feb. 1915, six British medical officers were sent to the camp which they found in a state of misery and disorganization. Of the six, three died of the fever, as did several French and Russian doctors. Notwithstanding the fact that there seem to have been ample supplies of medical necessaries available, the difficulty of obtaining sufficient drugs and dressings was extreme. There was not even any soap till one of the British doctors obtained a supply at his own expense from England, nor, till April 1915, were beds or bedding for patients requiring hospital treatment improvised in one of the barracks. There were between 700 and 800 British prisoners among at least 15,000 in all, who, incredible as it may seem, were confined in an area not exceeding 10½ acres. Of the British about 300 were attacked by the disease and 60 died.
At Gardelegen the same story was repeated. As soon as it was apparent in February 1915 that something was wrong, captured medical officers were dispatched to Gardelegen, where the conditions were favourable for the propagation of disease. Though there were empty huts in the camp, the commandant refused to allow them to be used, and the prisoners' rooms were very overcrowded, the nationalities, as usual, being all mixed up together. To each company of 1,200 men was allotted for washing one outdoor trough, which was often frozen, and there was a small hut containing at the most thirty showers for 11,000 men. The place was bitterly cold, the heating arrangements entirely inadequate, consequently the huts were kept closed, and the atmosphere therein became foul. Four days after the arrival of the Allied medical officers every German had left the camp, and the commandant, standing outside the barbed wire, informed the medical officers that no person or thing was to pass out, and that they were responsible for the discipline and general internal arrangement of the camp, and for the care of the sick. Dr. Wenzil, the German principal medical officer, left the camp with the rest, but soon afterwards died of typhus. His two successors never came inside the camp. But the third, Dr. Kranski, a civilian, came in March and devoted himself seriously to the welfare of the camp, and, though he took no part in the care of the sick, did much to improve the sanitation, and in that way to aid the medical men in their work. It is unnecessary to go through the whole story of the struggles to obtain the barest requisites in the way of food, drugs, dressings or furniture. The plague was stayed after four months, during which over 2,000 cases were treated out of 11,000 prisoners, the mortality being about 15% of those attacked. Of the 16 Allied medical officers, 12 took the disease and 3 died, while of 10 French priests, who devoted themselves to the care and nursing of the sick, eight were attacked and five succumbed.
The epidemics at Wittenberg and Gardelegen in these circumstances of gratuitous suffering and official callousness made a world-impression never likely to be entirely effaced, but it is only just to add that the German authorities, having learnt their lesson at the cost to others of so much suffering and death, did their best, too late indeed, to remedy the defects, and Gardelegen and Wittenberg eventually became, if not model, at all events fairly satisfactory camps.
German Working Camps.—In mines and large industrial places, there was generally a small sick-bay containing from two or three beds up to perhaps a dozen, in charge of a German Sanitäter. There was no resident doctor, but a civilian practitioner called in well-managed camps daily, in others at intervals varying from twice a week to four weeks. In case of accident he was summoned as soon as the Feldwebel in charge thought fit. In the smaller camps reliance was placed simply on the local practitioner, which ordinarily was sufficient provision, though in some places, such as the large land reclamation camps in Hanover, the nearest doctor might live at any distance up to 20 kilometres. A prisoner seriously ill or injured was either taken to the hospital at the main camp to which his commando was attached, or sent to the local hospital, military or civil.
The real defect in the medical arrangements in these places was that too much power was left in the hands of the person in charge to decide whether a man reporting sick should see the doctor or not. The regulations in the II. Army Corps district provided that there must be a clinical thermometer in each commando, and the guard was to be instructed in the use of it. No prisoner was to be sent to work who had a temperature above 38° (100.4° Fahrenheit). This seems to have been construed as meaning that the prisoner was to be sent to work unless he could show that temperature. Armed with his thermometer the Feldwebel in charge often declined to allow the prisoner to see the doctor. The test was in some cases sufficient, in many it was no test at all, and the results were sometimes fatal.
British Medical Arrangements.—In the United Kingdom the arrangements for the treatment of sick and wounded prisoners did not differ in essentials from those made in Germany. At first there were no special hospitals for them, but in Sept. 1915 a large hospital was opened at Dartford. This accommodation, however, soon became insufficient, and at the time of the Armistice there were seven hospitals entirely set apart for prisoners. In addition to these large hospitals there was a hospital with beds to the number of about 2% of the prisoners, for the treatment of minor and urgent cases; while in the working camps the services of the local practitioner were given as required. In exceptional cases prisoners requiring special treatment were sent to an ordinary military or civil hospital.
Repatriation.—Closely allied with the matter of medical treatment is the question of repatriation and internment in a neutral country. As early as Jan. 1915, an agreement for repatriation of incapacitated officers was made. There was at first no agreement as to the degree of incapacity sufficient to entitle an officer to repatriation, but in August of that year an agreement was arrived at, which was slightly amended in October. It included 13 injuries or complaints entitling a person to be repatriated, which may be summed up as being such that the person was permanently, or for a calculable period, unfit for military service in the army, or in the case of an officer or non-commissioned officer, from service in training or office work.
But besides this direct repatriation of totally incapacitated persons, many prisoners were sent to Switzerland or Holland.
In the spring of 1916 an agreement was made with the German and Swiss Governments by which prisoners whose disabilities fell within an agreed schedule but were not sufficient to
