PETTING THE PRISONERS.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14621, 28 January 1918, Page 2

PETTING THE PRISONERS.

A CONTRAST IN CONDITIONS

A cablegram published this week stated that" the authorities in England are bringing German prisoners irom France to work on farms in the coutli of England and that the prisoners jii-o keen on the work. No doubt they are, if the following extract from the London newspaper "John Bull" of October 27th, 1917, "showing the conditions under which the Huns are employed is true :

The Rural Council'of Welton, neai Lincoln, thought of employing some German prisoners to work on the roads under its jurisdiction -After being referred ' lYom pillar to post, the council at length' learned some of the conditions on which the Hun labour would he supplied. .Primarily, the prisoners had to be conveyed from camp to their work and back again—th/ 3 chairman suggested that a motor lorry might be obtained—and they were to be provided with shelter-, from rain, ano with water and fuel tor their mid-day meal. Anybody who has seen Englishmen engaged lit work on rural roads will note the enormous balance in favour 6f the Huns. The British labourer gets 2s a day for road-mend-ing and tending. He has no "conveyance" —except a wheelbarrow, which he must push—and he tramps to his job, wherever it may be. lie lias no shelter* from the rain except a sack of his own providing which he throws over his shoulders. As for water and fuel, the parish would laugh at the notion of either. He squats on a heap of stones under the hedge, and eats the cold food he has been able to carry in his handkerchief. .Such conditions of employment are too coarse for the Kultureo Huns, who are prisoners and not children of the soil. Travelling from Lincolnshire into Herts, we find it gravely recorded that the Herts War Agricultural Committee has increased the pay of prisoners of war from 4d to 5d per hour, which' is certainly very muc'.i more than Tommy gets for lighting and capturing the brutes. It is a wicked shame that the pay of the Huns should be increased; we 'should prefer to se«. it reduced to the infinitesimal level, of the rate paid to our boys who are prisoners in enemy hands. But perhaps the Herts Committee will soon be paying the Hams a war boimsl To cap all comes the impudent demand of the "Cologne Gazette" that the young Hun prisoners should be either repatriated or given opportunities to continue their studies in colleges here!