Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-03-03
.U. S. @HITCHES WAGON TO S1AR"
IN CARE OF GERMANS LNTERNED
HERE AS RESULT OF WORLD WAR

| men by a city street. Round about
| each camp are high stockades with
barbed-wire fences. Patrols are main
| tanned about the camps on the nigh
ways and railroads to prevent escapes.
When the camp was completed there
was nothing for the meE< - do. Tnere
was no provision for activities except
. such sports as the men themselves
| might devise. A large number We're
| employed in the kitchen; they kept the
place in order, some ran the pumping
engines; others looked after the water
supply, plumbing and electricity.
! Practically all the work inside the
camp is performed by the Germans,
supervision of the director of intern
ment in charge, Mr.. Alfred Hampton
of the bureau of immigration The
food is good; it costs about ii cents a
German employees paid under The
Hague tribunal provision for wages.
There has been some complaint that
the cost is too high; that the prisoners
ought not to be fed so WELL and that
they ought not to have such comfort
able houses in which to live. The
hotel is used for Offices. and the can
Torment camps are built like those of
American soldiers. Mr.. Hampton, the
director, replies that 1--WE are not
making war on civilian Germans; we
are not making war on the German
b
war on those Germans who were in
the United States on a commercial err
rand before the war, and, moreover,
the price is little enough for us to pay
if it serves as a protection for Amerf-
can boys who may be prisoners of war
in Germany"
And the Germans have been permit
ted to find amusements for them
selves. They have developed a life of
their own. They developed it and per-
fected it until what a few months ago
was merely an internment camp has
now become center of every kind of
activity. On the river banks German
village was laid out. 1t is suggestive
of Old Heidelberg. the crooked streets
of Nurnberg or some little village in
the Black mountains. One almost for
gets that one is in the mountains of
North Carolina as he walks along the
narrow. crooked streets of this Ger
man village, fianked ON either side by
artistic playhouses built by the men
living in, although ingenious stoves
have been built to keep them warm
from stones picked up along the river
side. And the houses themselves are
made from scraps of lumber, from
broken branches of trees. from little
pieces of wood. They are shingied with
tin cans and are papered within and
tinted at very little expense.
Gothic Church in Miniature.
At the head of the roadway is min
iature Gothic church. Its lines are
good: it has pews within it, a pulpit
and all the accessories of a church. But
it is merely a play church Not more
than twenty men could get inside of it.
And it is built from mosaics of scraps
gathered together by the men. 1t is
shingled and surfaced on the outside
with tin cans fattened out and nailed
against scraps of wood. The founda-
tions are stone from the river. bottom.
The windows are made from scraps or
from glass purchased comparatively by
the three or four men who got together
for the building of their little houses.
Flowers of all kinds were planted,
and in short time the German village
was a flower garden. And when this
work was completed the men who had
constructed these buildings organized
classes for study. One of these houses
is an artists studio, two or three are
cabinet-making shops. Some old men
are weaving. They are plying all the
trades that they learned in their idle
hours on shipboard. Wonderful mosaic
work made out of cigar boxes is turn
ed out. as are little ships complete in
every detxil
On the river bank some one of the
sailors found the stump of an old tree
protruding. 1t was converted into a
REPRODUCTION OF an dlISdtoT II pio-
tects the approach to the village. The
men excavated and built great swim
ming pool in the midst of the woods of
the camp: they laid out tennis courts;
and one artist brought back old me
dieya1 Germany, the Germany of Wag-
ner, In the reproduction of scene from
one of Wagners operas.
The Young Mems Christian Associa-
ton followed the Germans to Hot
Springs, as it has followed our soldiers
to their cantonmentS, and it came with
plans for service. with money enough
to buy lumber. but no money for labor,
and the representative of the Young
Mems Christian Association called a
number of the German seamen together
in their camp and asked them if they
would be willing to build a Young
Mems Christian Association building if
supplied with material and tools. I'm
mediately the men organized con-
struction squad. They gave their labor
gratuitousIy.
They erected big building, probably
200 by $50 feet. artistically designed. as
a clubroom and schoolhouse, and i'm
mediately all the classes were filed.
Four hundred men were Immediately
enrolled. The Germans produced their
own teachers. Classes were established
| in elementary and advanced English
Other classes were formed in French
and in Spanish. Shorthand, geography.
chemistry, marine engineering and nav
igation are taught. All day and all
, evening these classes are at work
studying various subjects