"ENEMY ALIENS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 156, 4 July 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

"ENEMY ALIENS."

WAR-TIME INTERNMENT.

BEHIND BARBED WIRE

(By E.V.1).)

Governments and "peoples during the Great War were constantly occupied with questions of mudh greater moment than the condition of the. civilian prisoners interned in • their . territories. Every country had them, but little was known of them except on the rare occasions when a few escaped. Now a man who spent four years in prison camps in England has told his story, and the student 4 of the Great War: will find in it a valuable record of what was admittedly an unimportant phase of the conflict. Count Portheim is already known to English readers by. his excellent study of the English "England the Unknown Isle," reviewed on this page some months ago, and in this book litis again always cool, sane and extremely fair. .■ -■> -

Count IPortheiin was interned soon after the war started, and he has some curious'tales to tell of his fellow prisoners. One was a young man named Schulz, who spoke no language but Spanish; another was a negro, born in Egypt, and therefore' (at that; time) a British subject; a third was an American; and a fourth had been brought up in Australia and had never seen a German before he entered the prison camp! All these had been arrested and interned because of. official blunders, which can be excused when one looks back and remembers, what a great many foolish things were done under the influence of war hysteria. '■

: The author is at pains to explain just how internment affected the prisoner. It was not the fact of being caged behind barbed wire and generally treated as a most dangerous criminal that hurt, but the obliteration of human personality/ "What was horrible was that one had ceased to be an individual and had become a number," and the sense of complete futility.. The prisoners were "quitepassive, they suffered in their way, but their suffering, was of no use to anybody, nor, were they, glorified for it." But even these things could be endured, and almost forgotten. The "horror of horrors" was. that a man was never alone—"not by day, not by night, not for an hour, not for a second, day after day, year after year;" Most people living in peace ; and" freedom, occasionally feel that they must "get away, from people," so that the feeling "of the prisoners can' be easily imagined. 'ft was the cause of a malady known as "barbed-wire sickneSs," and some symptoms, of it lasted long after the -prisoner's; release.

| The author says that the stories circulated in the "stunt Press" in England about "Pampered. Ijuns" were pure fiction. He insists that the condition of interned prisoners on both .sides did not vary materially, because "both sides were continually receiving reports about the cainpS; from neutral observers, and they hastened to adjust the conditions they, controlled to those reported from the other side." . Nevertheless,, owing to the food shortage in Germany, one may fairly conclude that the condition of ■British prisOlners in Germany was r worse than that of German in Britain. However, as the author remarks, the whole question became part ..of the vast' system of propaganda.

When being marched through a street en route to the prison camp, Count Portheim noted that "only .one .Iface stood out from the crowd, that of an old woman! She gririiacedvfuriously and shouted ''Uns!', then she grinned and nodded and said in a lower tone and with a curious sort of satisfaction, as if to herself: 'Biby-killers!' Then again, the furious 'Uns,' the smug.' "Bibykillers!' Her voice seemed to follow tne all .the, way. She was quite drunk. It is evidence of his fair-mindedness that this sensitive man should relate this story with perfect good humour. But he recognises that "Trr.th was murdered by war, and thus every day that hatred was fanned anew without which the war could not have continued." ♦"Time Stood Still; 191-1-18," by Paul Cohen-Portheim (Duckworth).