A TASTE OF LIBERTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16375, 1 November 1916, Page 8

A TASTE OF LIBERTY.

• •I ' J CONVALESCENTS IN SWITZERLAND. j Whiting from Muren. Switzerland, Lord : Northcliffe, in the D-ily Mai], describes s the condition of convalescent prisoners of , war who have benefited by the arrange- | ment to send a number of captives from Germany to Switzerland. 1 Soldiers who were taken at Mons and ' at Le Cateau, at Loos, and some even ■ more recently, he says, are housed in the i very best mountain hotels and chalets n , Switzerland. The men only arrived at Muren last week and have not yet settled down to freedom. Many of them still 1 wear the strange look noticeable in those >. who have got out of Germany. Numbers j can hardly yet realise that they are free, arid more than one remarked that when ' he awoke in the morning in his comfortable bedroom and gazed out upon the brilliant sunshine on the snowy expanses . opposite he feared it was but a, dream. I If there be any more sumptuously j housed privates in "the British Army in ■ any other part of the world I should be j greatly surprised. i A man from the hateful Wittenberg was j lying in a deck-chair on the sunny veranI dah outside his bedroom, to which was .' attached the very latest type of private bathroom. There was a bowl of roses and | edelweiss and a'box of Woodbines by his ! side. By his bedside I noticed a photoj graph of his wife and children at home, , and he had abundance of books and Eng- , lish newspapers. ! His surroundings are typical of all those at Muren. Nothing can be too good [or out soldiers, and at Muren and also at Chateau d'CEx, of which I obtained full accounts from English visitors, the best that modern hotels-de-luxe can give is Riven them. Flowers, sleep, sunshine, and happiness are everywhere. j The officers are housed separately, as , I are, of course, the non-commissioned offi-

.-.». n..™. iioMjiß are on the same scale . f comfort and there is, therefore, no i lifference of treatment. ' md the little colony at Muren is already wUlintr down.into some form of discipline ! When they b»t arrived, such as were able to walk clambered up and down A > ramhlme mountain paths, shouting and "nging hi, children on a school treat rW colli-1 with 1 ; *™W* br ; ff them ft to believe that they we're free" I r.ateh brothers in affliction, all were C ' -nny.ncr the first, taste of Vh.rtv nd " libertv in the nearest approach "♦„ a i -rthV Paradlae that CaU tIS fi