RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2758, 29 April 1916, Page 6

RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP

NAPIER MAN'S EXPERIENCE. When war was declared, Mr. and Mrs. J. C. King, of Napier, were making a two years' tour of the Continent, and they happened at the time to bo in Berlin. Mr. King was promptly arrested and sent off to Ruhleben, Mrs. King eventually getting back to London. Now the former is there' too. He arrived recently in company of six Englishmen, who had been released from Ruhleben, and of 20 Englishwomen who had been repatriated. Relatives assembled at Tilbury awaiting the arrival, of the steamer, and it is not surprising that recognition was not always easy. It is on record that one lady at first failed to recognise her own husband'. She had left him. in Berlin a slim, cleanshaven young man; he reached Tilbury bearded and cruelly aged—another man altogether. Speaking to a newspaper representative, Mr. King said: "Whatever improvements there have been at RubleDon are solely due to the prisoners themselves. The' German authorities have done absolutely nothing to better conditions; So far as the food is concerned it grows worse, and the camp lives absolutely on the parcels sent from England. If it were not for these many men would die. The bread served out in the camps is abominable stuff, asd not 10 per cent, of the prisoners eat it."