But the French are only part of Zossen.  There are Russians—­shaggy peasants such as we see in cartoons or plays at home, and Mongol Russians with flat faces and almond eyes, who might pass for Chinamen.  There are wild-eyed “Turcos” from the French African provinces, chattering untamed Arabs playing leap-frog in front of their German commandant as impudently as street boys back in their native bazaars.  There are all the tribes and castes of British Indians—­“I’ve got twenty different kinds of people in my Mohammedan camp,” said the lieutenant who was showing me about—­squat Gurkhas from the Himalayas, minus their famous knives—­tall, black-bearded Sikhs, with the faces of princes.  There are even a few lone Englishmen, though most of the British soldiers in this part of Germany are at Doberitz.  Whether or not Zossen could be called a “show” camp, it seemed, at any rate, about as well managed as such a place could be.  The prisoners were housed in new, clean, one-story barracks; well fed, so far as one could tell from their appearance and that of the kitchens and storerooms; they could write and be written to, and they were compelled to take exercise.  The Roman Catholics had one chapel and the Greek Catholics another, and there was an effort to permit Indian prisoners to observe their rules of caste.

As we tramped through barracks where chilly Indians, Russians with broad, high cheek-bones, sensitive-looking Frenchmen with quick, liquid eyes, jumped to their feet and stiffened at attention as the commandant passed, a young officer, who had lived in England before the war and was now acting as interpreter, volunteered his guileless impressions.  The Turcos were a bad lot—­fighting, gambling, and stealing from each other —­there was trouble with some of, them every day.  The Russians were dirty, good-natured, and stupid.

The English—­well, frankly, he was surprised at their lack of discipline and general unruliness—­all except some of the Indians, and those, he must say, were well-trained—­fine fellows and good soldiers.  One could surmise the workings of his mind as one thought of the average happy-go-lucky Tommy Atkins, and then came across one of those tall, straight, hawk-eyed Sikhs and saw him snap his heels together and his arms to his sides and stand there like a bronze statue.

It was a dreadful job getting the Frenchmen to take exercise—­“they can’t understand why any one should want to work, merely to keep himself fit!” Aside from this idiosyncrasy they were, of course, the pleasantest sort of people to get along with.  We saw Frenchmen sorting mail in the post-office, painting signs for streets, making blankets out of pasted-together newspapers—­everywhere they were treated as intelligent men to whom favors could be granted.  And, of course, there was this difference between the French and English of the early weeks of the war—­the French army is one of universal conscription like the German, and business men and farmers, writers, singers, and painters were lumped in together.  There was one particularly good-looking young man, a medical officer, who flung up his head to attention as we came up.