Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/156

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SECRETS OF CREWE HOUSE

Ask brave men who have succeeded with unspeakable difficulty in escaping from the enemy captivity about this. Plundered to the utmost in wire compounds, roofless, goaded by hunger and thirst into treasonable utterances, forced by blows and threats of death to betray their comrades, spat upon, pelted with filth by the French populace while being driven to hard labour, that is what the paradise that the enemy conjures up really looks like.

Reproductions of original letters written by prisoners are also thrown down, in which these men describe how well it goes with them. God be praised, there are still also decent and humane commandants of prisoners' camps in England and France; but these are the exception, and the letters the enemy throws down are only of three or four different kinds. But he sends these multiplied by many thousands of copies. The enemy intimidates the faint-hearted by saying:

"Your struggle is hopeless; America will settle you; your submarines are no good; we are building more ships than they sink; after the war we shall