The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-08-15

l " utit ilSltdu Di them 1OAn GOIle d I couple of hundred moujik farm hands. 1 They are under three or four sentries 1 The prisoners are docile, make litt<1 1 trouble and seldom run away. Every 1 morning they leave their compound,
 and go in twos, threes and fours to I aiiferent farms: work all day. and re-
 turn for the roll call in the evening. 1 When farm work is done the prisoners are sent back to a central camp or i they go 10 some other farm. The fore l men carpenters and metal workers ome again; the camp is dismantled, l and the materials are re-erected else where.
 Repair Ravages of War
 Russian prisoners and with them French prisoners. are engaged in mall- ing roads, railroads and canals. They help to repair the ravages of war. After the second battle of Masuria. and the final Russian evacuation of East Prussia. 1,00O Russians were sent to the country cast of Konigsberg and Sodau. Ten thousand of them are house-builders; they are restoring the shattered and burnt houses. Russians are good hands al all sorts of earth work Germany is building new strategical railways. The proners are making the tunnels and em- bankments. They are being employed in retaining waste land. When the land is reclaimed they will be put to cultivating 1t, so that the supply of food will be increased. suggestion is made that they should reclaim the marshes around the Masurian lakes. Hindenburg put dam per on this programme. He says the Masurian marshes are worth 10 fortresses and that he would sooner rage Metz than drain pint of water out of the Masurian depression. Twenty thousand prisoners are retaining the big bogs of~Odenburg, and 5000 have started to reclaim the Luneberger Heide, a big sterile heath in Hanover. Before June the prisoners had reclaimed land enough to produce food for 100000 persons. In Central Prus- sia, prisoners dig canals. It is proposed to put them to settle an old Prussian political and economical problem. This | "middle-land canal'' project was defeated years ago by the Prussian grain-growing landowners, who feared it would njure their interests by helping competitors in the west. At present traffic between the Rhine manufacturing districts and the eastern food producing districts must go
 by rail IS the dangers of the North sea | are great. If the prisoners dig the canal there will be internal watef communca- ton all across the empire.
 Will Get Rich on Prisoners
 Germany will get rich on her prisoners Professor Fischer estimates that the gain per prisoner will be $15c0 a head which makes for all the prisoners si50000 coo Tt would cost Germany twice as much money as that to hire labor of equal productive value, and under present war conditions we could not got the labor. Every pris- oner taken is an addition of two men to cur combined military and economic strength. He means a loss of one man 10 the enemy army and he means that enc more German may be taken from civilian life and sent to the front The l,eO0ooO prisoners taken put the balance in our favor at 100000. If the coming year We take 100000 prisoners, we shall carry On all our agricultural work with ease, and in addition we shall restart many of our factories. The war will be- come relatively easy. We shall have a surplus of food, and more manufa ctured goods than We want. We shall in fact be able to heap up manufactured goods for transport abroad when the war ends''
 Prisoners, Fischer says, are having a remarkable social and political effect upon the country and upon themselves Ihe German farmers get on we'll with the Russian. The Russians. with the Siav facility, adapt themselves quick ly to the German labor: their good humor and frank ways make them liked, and they learn to speak Ger man. At night they meet in their barns and, in presence of wonder-eyed peas ants dance their wild dance. German maids look on and pity the captives
 There are some romances. About d hundred prisoners have applied for permission to marry farm girls and daughters of farmers and to become German subjects Most of these Rus sians are educated noncommissioned officers. or they are Baltic province Germans. German speaking Let's or German farmer colonists, Russian sub- lects, from the southern steppes and the north slopes of the Caucasus There are nearly 10000 Russian prisoners to whom German is the mother tongue or one of two mother tongues These are sent with the farm labor gangs to act as interpreters. The ministry of
 var has not granted any of the mar rlo2e petitions. There is no love sen timent about German war making A couple of German speaking Esths from near ReNal eloped with their German t1aids. Before being caught they found a priest who married them. The brides and bridegrooms were separated and tine gridegrooms sent back to the com pound
 Thoughtful men speculate on the ef- feet for Russia of having a million of her citizens in Germany and Austria, countries where the economical level The standard of wages and other con- ditions are entirely different from those of their home country. What will the haif- -GermaniZed mouiik do when hc gets back to Russia? After the wars with Napoleon the Frenchified Russian officers came home. discontented with conditions in Russia and 10 years aft. CT Napoleon fell they started revolu- tfon against Czar Nicholas l. A mill lion Russians. Germanized and used to semi soeialistic Germany. will have a queer influence on Russias home af- fairs.
 Some Germans, for this reason don't want the Russians to go back The prisoners will bring back German edu- cation and technical efficiency. and they will help to turn Russia into d iaore dangerous country for Germany than she Is today. They will give Rus sia the stimulus to internal reconstruc- tlon which alone can make Russia I really strong military power Why. ask some Germans, not Germanize the prisoners and keep them? The chief ,nthusiasts for this are some junl<er landowners who cannot carry on farm ing for lack of hired men For gen eration this class has been trying to keep Germans settled on the land: and by means of home colonization to set did not succeed they have had recourse sIa and Austria Hungary The import mer, gone away and returned next wear. The landowners are asking themselves how they will manage aft CT the war Many German laborers will have been killed: there will be tre- aJapfa as1,t.e 1 ,1 r-,, 1.l.