The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-04-20
GERMANS CAPTIVES ARE WELL TREATED
Report of Swiss Sent to Ob- serve the Conditions in
 the Camps.

Berlin. April 2o.-one great thing that makes Switzerland unique, that sets it apart as nation by itself is that as soon as a crying need is felt, is well aired in the papers and dis oussed in the homes, a committee for it's relief springs up goes about the business of relieving with great de- liberation and methodA and ends up by wiping the crying ne@A from. the face or the earth, says Ethel Hugli-Camp,l in in the New York Times
 From the first, when the prisoners of war began to write heartrending letters that crept into print and were copied by the Swiss press, about the hardships of prison camp life, | knew that it would be Switzerland's lot to gird up her loins, form 8 committee, and get the truth of the matter. Sure enough the the moment came We could look on quietly no longer, and a committee was formed. L1ieut.-Col. one1 deMarveIs of Neuchatel was dis patched to France to inspect theapris-- oners camps there. MT. Naville of Geneva went to England, and mem Der of the Swiss parliament, MT. Eug- kster, went to Germany The two for nner have sent home categorical con- tradictions of all the horrors reported to exist in France and her colonies and in England, and pow the third, | MT. Eugster, has returned from Ger many W1Cn a IaVOTaD16 account Ol tl1l0 l prison camps there that will make, many a French and English mother draw a long breath of relief It is with his report that I will chiefly con- cern myself in this article.
 The arrangement of the camps is purely Prussian and simply reekss of. law and order. In Berlin, where MT. Eugster and his two companions, a member of the Red Cross, and the Spanish minister to Germany began their tour, they were shown a, com lpIete listl of the 100000 British, Rus sian and French prisoners who were divided among the sixty German camps. Of these 5000. 900 MT. Eugster saw but 67,000 French and IT., 900 British and Russian.
 Says Camps Are Models.
 The prisoner camps as described by MT. Eugster, are certainly models. They are usually placed on large pa- l rade grounds and take in all the sur lrounding empty buildings, such as tarnnories, stations, etc On the parade grounds themselves wooden barracks are erected, each one calculated to house 120 to 200 men. The walls of these barracks are double5 the space lso that they very successfully keep out the cold. Added to this, each bar rack has stoyes each man a sack af straw that is changed at stated inter- tYalS, ana every one mas the T1ShN' to two blankets. When add that Eug- ster states positively that the barracks are all furnished with electric lights, running water, and sanitary arrange
 ments, you can see that if one must be a. prisoner of war, he should choose EDeutsch1and as his destination.
 Each one of the barracks, ranged down both sides of a cehtEal street, with side streets branching off right and left, is presided over by a non commissioned officer, himself a pris- oners and asnswerab1e to the military authorities for order among his men. The German soldiers thus interfere as little as possible in the life of the bar racks, contenting themselves wth a general oversight of the camp. The possibilities of escaping are, so to speak, all, for where the very v1giIant, II German sentries do not stand guard. the no less vigilant and effective barb 1 wire fence,s mostly charged with a H high voltage of electricity. hold watch and ward.
 Every camp has it's own canteen and hospital, and it speaks highly for the
 care received by the prisoners to note Eugster's statement that in no camp hospital have eases of illness amounted
 to more than three per cent of the
 inmates.
 II In the canteen kitchen the food is prepared for the whole camp and di- yided among the various barracks
 The food of the ordinary German sol
 dier costs the government about if teen cents a day, and exactly the same
 amount is expended for the food o1
 the prisoners. In the morning they
 get nailk-ceffee. The milk and the , vats, and it is this mixture that the : coffee are boiled together in great prisoner drinks. At noon every one s gets a goodly portion of svegetab1e soup with a chunk of meat in it. This fS f a little for supper Nobody has indi . gestion. Each man has a one-pounG ] lloaf of bread and slice of cheese ol
 a sausage, this last named carefully
 wrapped in a piece of white paper. In order that the prisoners will no lose their minds from enforced in
 activity, they are told off in gangs fol
 various forms of mauna1 labor, sucT as working on the railway, grading
 streets, etc. When one thinks of tn,
 class of men who are among thu . French prisoners one must agree tha
 this labor. while welcome, must seen + strange to many of them. I know e French Count, belonging to ricl
 and influential family, who left hi
 ancestral home to fight for his coun : try. and is now breaking stone for tn
 German
 Rooms For Worship
 2 Not only manual labor is provide, q ot distract the minds of the prisoners
 In every camp there are rooms SC
 aside for the various kinds of wor ship of the Allies. These are a,ls
 ateliers for the painters and sculptors {, and in one camp MT. Eugster cam
 upon a chorus of 200 men practicin,
 French oratario under the leadershi
 of one of the prisoners. in civil Tiff Il 8 professional music director.
 d There is some international arrange
 nent by which captured officers hay 1t the right to private quarters, and d T. not need to bunk with their mer h This rule is carefully observed in al n the camps visited by MT. Eugstel Fe and he was furthermore struck by tn ss fact that a. captured officer receive g. the. same pay as officers of the cor