EXCHANGED PRISONERS

Evening Star, Issue 16195, 17 August 1916, Page 2

EXCHANGED PRISONERS

ENTHUSIASM AT BERNE,

Appended to the despatch is tho following report on the reception of the prisoners at -berne, by Mr Goodhart, of the British Legation, who represented the British Minister°in the absence of Lord Acton through illness: The first party of British invalid prisoners arrived at Berne at 12.40 a.m. on May 30. Ropes were stretched across the platform with a small military guard to keep the crowd, numbering at its neatest some 2,000 people, from rendering the passage to the restaurant impassable. Enthusiastic cheering greeted the arrival of tho train, which was hailed so that the carriages containing the 32 officers were opposite the reserved space where I was waiting with those members of His Majesty's Lection who had not gone to Chateau d'Oex His Majesty's Consul, the members of the Reception Committee, and a number of allied diplomats. After tho officers had been conducted to the'first-class restaurant, the train was moved, and the men were taken to the third-class restaurant, in two batches, as they numbered 272 in all.

Officers and men were served with hot coffee and rolls and butter. Fruit, cigarettes, chocolate, and post-cards, besides flowers in' profusion, were the principal gifts brought by private individuals, many of wohm were Swiss. The British colony were in full force.

The officers were conveyed in first class carnages, the men in second class. One officer told me that in Germany until close to the frontier even tho officers made the journey in third class carriages with wooden seats. Two native officers (a subadar and a jamadar) of the 4th Gurkhas excited much interest, and were referred to in somo quarters next day as Japanese. "When the men returned to the train the ropes were removed and the crowd allowed to circulate freely all along the platform. The enthusiasm was extraordinary. The carnages were already massed with flowers on arrival at Berne. Tho train left .again at 3 a.m. amid a storm of cheers.

The second night was a. repetition of tho first, hut there were no officers and only 147 men, who profited by the absence of the former, so that there were almost as many herpers in the restaurant as there were invalids.

An interesting detail told by one soldier was that when the 100 rejected men at Constance were leaving to return to the prison camps they went away singing. The spirit of the men is beyond all praise; some of them had been captured at the beginning of the war. Many men volunteered the infonnation that without the bread and other stores sent from Berne by the Bureau de Secours aux rrisonniers de Guerre they would not have been alive now. They weri particularly interested to meet the ladies engaged in this work. Even in the camp when the general treatment was good, the food was almost uneatable. One man told me that the prisoners had to work, each man being apportioned duties according to his physical state'.

It is impossible to avoid tho impression that this extraordinary reception of our men by the Swiss was a, national demonstration in favor of England. If William Tell had been reincarnated and made a triumphal progress through the country I do not see what more could have been done. Our men were simply astounded, and naturally so, after being, many of them treated with every obloquy for two years or nearly so. Many of them were crying like children, a few fainted from emotion! As one private said to mo: "God bless you, sirit's like dropping right into 'eaven from 'ell." '

The officers and men are most comfortably lodged and fed. They have made themselves quite at home, and I hope the fine air of Chateau d'Oex will soon bring back their health.

I refrain from repeating tho stories they told mc of their treatment in Germany. I hope some day a Commission in London will record the evidence of our men.