The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1917-12-27

heed whatever to the greencoats and
the commandant has grown wise.
He has fished Germans out of out
going garbage at the gate of the
P. w. compound. He has fished notes
out of bean soup at the door of the
II. w messroom. He has dug tubes Ut
a certain tooth paste out of loaves OF
bread and put them safely away IN
the censors office; for, beside it's adj
vertised uses this particular paste
which I must not name helps to make
a beautifully efficacious invisible ink.
And through ii all he has tempered
his judgment with mercy; they still
tell of him here in the village, how
last summer when the vicinity of the
P. W. camp became fayorite resort
for spooning couples from the village
he had all spooners banished from his
neighborhood because his prisoners
complained that the giggling of girls
outside the compound in the cleaning
constituted cruel and unusual form
of punishment for them.
On the whole, a good deal of water
had flowed under London bridge be-
fore Oberleutnant Max Schneider of
some Prussian regiment or other came
from Vimy to the communicates lit
tie place in the country some months
ago. The commandant didn't know
Oberleutnant Max Schneider from his
700-odd other members of the All Is
Lost league, nor did the oberleutnaut
know the commandant from any other
of the verdammlich Englander-until
the oberleutnant first saw the bunk
room in which he was to sleep for the
duration of the war. Then the COM
mandant suddenly became almost .
sacred thing. a being. to Max
Quite little cheap finery of ~
sort and another had been hung up
l. Il. 1T.
sleep at 10 p. M every night, but half
an hour after he had first glimpsed
his bunk he had pulled it all down.
1T had been hung there by the other
prisoners for lack of anything else
to do in the intervals between their
classes in English and Spanish and
French, but the other prisoners got
it back in a furry when Max laid his
hands on it,. MaNs own corner was
soon as bare as it must have been
when the grandiose old building was
first completed
On his very first morning in the
camp, Oberleutnant Schneider insisted
on restoring a good deal of sod to n
patch in the compound which had for
merly been the front garden of Don
abel the country place which now
had been trimmed about with barbcd
wire and filled with German officers.
leutnant Schneider had secured the
commentaries consent TO direct the
cleaning up of piles of refuse which
had been stacked against the hastily
thrown up German servants quarters.
He soon was a recognized crank
in the bautifuying of the p. w. camp.
Certainly if there is anything on earth
which distinctly is not likely to warm
the cookies of a mans heart it is the
p. W. camp in which he is locked up
for months and months and months.
But Ober1eutnant Schneider had tax ell
the beautifuyfng of his prison COM
pound on his own shoulders and was
putting in odd bits OF time continual
ly at it.
The commandant thought at first that
he was shamming
AS [ said before much water has
moved down the Thames under London
bridge since the commandant first opened
this camp. And it was the commentaries
notion, after a couple of weeks watch
ing Oberleutnant Schneider that if his
7O0-odd prisoners should all at once make
a concerted leap for the wires, their lead
er, he would feel sure, would ultimately
be found to be this most exemplary
young oberleutnant, Herr Max Schnoi-
der.
AS the thing kept up, the commandments
suspicious kept soaring. Now there are
various underground means which none
but prison managers know Ct think they
are some secret gifts conferred by the
gods on none but prison managers),
which enable them in some magic way
to read the inmost thoughts of their prS-
oners and know what their actual inten-
tions are. The commandant consulted
his backgrounds, but they only mystified
him the more. For word came back that
Oberleutnant Schneider apparently was
engineering nothing among the other
prisoners. Apparently he was not sham
ming at ALL and this, said the COM
mandant to himself, made the case of
Oberleutnant Max Schneider more utter
ly without precedent than ever.
1t was only this morning when the
commentaries perpleXity suddenly
whitfield out. And very simply, too.
His censor handed him a letter, by way
of passing the buck, which is way
that p. w. censors have.
Its about the camp, SIR said the
censor, and letters about the camp are
not allowed to pass in or out of the COM
pound This is a very stringent rule.
The Commandant read the letter. IT
was addressed to Dearest Max, and was
signed Mutterchen. 1t was written in
English and posted at Liverpool. 1t was
the first letter Oberleutnant Max had re-
ceived at the camp from his Mutterchen,
I Gnu III II his niutlcICltH tOlQ ulIil jill
about Donabel in the days before it le-
came a camp for captured Huns. For
| back in the days of peace, Max's German
grandparents, living in England, had
built Donabel. In it's great drawing
| room, Maxs German father had married
his English fiancee, six years before his
potash business had failed and Donabel
had had to be sold and Max's father and
Max had moved to Germany. And in
the very bunk room where Max himself
-ObeleutnGnt Max Schneider-now slept
as a, prisoner of war; he had rs years
ago, been born.
rs Max one of your white menu"
| asked the commandant finally.
Yes. | think he is" said the COM
| mandant. Anyway, he received his let
ter
Which ends a true story There aren't
many like him in the ranks of the Huns
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