The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-25

man per day. so that the reduction was
 considerable.
 Tn order to ohtin their food the pris-
 oners in each building lined ID in fours
 and made to march down to the kitchen
 under an armed guard. They were ad-
 mitted into the kitchens in twos made
 to take their hats off and served with
 soup from a boiler: soldier ladled the
 soup direct into the bowls They then
 passed on and were formed into ranks of four deep and had to wait until all had received their portion. The return to barracks was then made and food consumed. Sometimes the waits were very long and prisoners were kept stand ing from one to one and one half hours. iut this was a matter of organization, and became better as the camp filled up with prisoners.
 The organization after this was only upset when very large new arrivals of prisoners took place. Sometimes We did not get any coffee at night. but only a little piece Of cheese or sausage, and hal to go to bed rather hungry. The water supply of the camp was plentiful, but could not drink the water It made me nnwen We were not permitted to leave the barracks between the hours of ? ?. m. and q. m. The sanitary arrange ments connected with the camp were bad but officers were being made to construct letter arrangements. It was surprising how bad they were considering a large number of German soldiers who were chartered close to the camp. There were millions of flies and mosquitoes On eer- tain occasions prisoners got mo coffee or food at night.
 Many Civilians Detained
 This. however, was due only to in- perfect organization and when it Is real ized that there Is about 2So0o prisoners in the camp the difficulties of organiza- ton will he clear. Of these 2S,ooo about 1000 were civilians. The military authori- ties were extremely careful to separate the soldiers from the civilians and to prevent soldiers of different nationaIities from speaking 10 one another. The in- habitants of each barraek were praeti- eally forbidden to exchange word. Not only were the nationalities kept separate but even prisoners taken at various times and al various places. Thus the Bel Rians tSNen at Liege were kept apart fl om those taken at Namur, The British soldiers were forbidden to talk to the French and to the civilians.
 .It is difficult to understand why the Germans had collected such large num- bers or civilians. In one barrack alone they had uil the male inhabitants of the Belgian \ illage. boys and men of advanced age up to 70. They justified this proceeding bS saving me ciN1iian population Tired on the German troops. There were a num- Ter of Russian and Japanese civilians in the camp, while amongst the British con- tingent in No. barrack were people from Australia, South Africa and other colonies.
 One day number of people who were said to have come from Louvain were brought into the camp. Against these the Germans seemed to have a consid- erable ill-feeling. and stated here again civilians had fired upon the troops. This later group included a number of people from the Goals in Belgium, and during the night some trouble arose with them and there was great deal of rifle firing within n few yards of our barracks. The firing took place again next day and a number of prisoners were killed. It was to know how many. but one of the German soldiers placed the num- her at 26. One prisoner hanged himseir. We were advised by the sergeant-ma1or h charge of Us that whatever We heard firing We were to lie down on the floor as this was the safest thing to do and we followed his instructions"