“189 inhabitants of Sinceny, who were sent to Erfurt, arrived there after a journey of 84 hours, during which each of them got nothing but a single morsel of bread weighing less than four ounces.  Another convoy spent four days on the railway journey and were only fed once, and were beaten with sticks and fists and with knife handles.”  The same brutalities were experienced in the German cities through which they passed, and very few of the civilian prisoners escaped being buffeted by the infuriated crowds or being spat upon.

So much for the journey.  Now for what happened to them after their arrival!  “The declarations made to us show clearly that the bulk of the prisoners almost collapsed from hunger.  After food had been distributed, when anything was left, you saw some of them rush to the neighbourhood of the kitchens; hustled and beaten by the sentries, these unfortunates risked blows and abuse to try and pick up some additional morsels of the sickening food.  You saw men, dying of hunger, picking up herring heads, and the grounds of the morning’s decoction.”

At Parchim, where 2,000 French civilians from 12 to 77 years of age were interned, two starving prisoners who asked for the scraps left over were beaten with the butt-ends of rifles to such an extent that they died of their wounds.  The young son of one of them who tried to protect his father was tied to a stake for a week on end.

On oath, Dr. Page deposes:  “Those who had no money almost died of hunger.  When a little soup was left, a crowd of unfortunates rushed to get it, and the non-commissioned officers got rid of them at last by letting the dogs loose on them.”  But what is the need of all these details and of all this evidence?  Look at the 10,000 who came back after being repatriated and see what the bandits have done to them.  Reader, summon up your courage and peruse to the bitter end the conclusions of the Official Commission of Enquiry.  “It is impossible to conceal the melancholy and indignation we felt on seeing the state of the ’hostages’[22] whom the Germans had returned to us after they had kidnapped them in defiance of the rights of nations.  During our enquiry we never ceased hearing the perpetual coughs that rent them.  We saw numbers of young people whose cheerfulness had disappeared apparently for ever, and whose pale and emaciated faces betrayed physical damage probably beyond repair.  In spite of ourselves we could not help thinking that scientific Germany had applied her methodical ways to try and spread tuberculosis in our country.  Nor were we less profoundly moved to thought by the sight of women mourning their desolated hearths and missing or captive children, or by the moral impression left on the faces and bearing of many prisoners by the hateful regime which was intended to destroy, in those who were subjected to it, the feeling of human dignity and self-respect."[23]

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