Nellie L. McClung

“ Here on the cement floor were piles of straw, and the place was heated. The walls were dirty and discolored. One of the few pleasant recollections of my life in Germany has been the feeling of drowsy content that wrapped me about when I lay down on a pile of straw in that dirty, rat-infested basement. I forgot that I was a prisoner, that I was badly winged, that I was hungry, thirsty, dirty, and tired. I forgot all about my wounded companions and the Canadian Highlander, and all the suffering of the world, and drifted sweetly out into the wide ocean of sleep. ”

“ The cold turkey was heaped up on the plates, with potatoes and corn on the cob; there were rows of lemon pies, with chocolate cakes and strawberry tarts. I could hear the dishes rattling and smell the coffee! I sat down before a plate of turkey, and was eating a leg, all brown and juicy—when I awakened.
There is a sense in which hunger sharpens a man's perceptions, and makes him see the truth in a clearer light—but starvation, the slow, gnawing starvation, when the reserve is gone, and every organ, every muscle, every nerve cries out for food—it is of the devil. ”

“ Life is a queer puzzle when a person has time to figure it out. We make things hard for each other. Here we were, Ted and I, lying all day inactive, not because we wanted to, but because we had to, to save our lives. Lying in a patch of scrub, stiff, cold, and hungry, when we might have been clearing it out and making of it a farm which would raise crops and help to feed the people! Hunger sharpens a man's mind and gives him a view of things that will never come when the stomach is full ”

“ Love is the only power that will endure, and when I read again the story of the Crucifixion, and Christ's prayer for mercy for his enemies because he knew they did not understand, I knew that this was the principle which would bring peace to the world. It is not force and killing and bloodshed and prison-bars that will bring in the days of peace, but that Great Understanding which only Love can bring. ”

“ I told him we had no quarrel with the German people, but we knew the military despotism of Germany had to be literally smashed to pieces before there could be any peace, and, naturally enough, the German people had to suffer for having allowed such a tyrant to exist in their country. We were all suffering in the process, I said.
"It's money," he said, after a pause. "It is the money interests that work against human interests every time, and all the time. The big ones have their iron heel on our necks. They lash us with the whip of starvation. ”

“ When we were out of the worst of the shell-fire, we stopped to rest, and, a great dizziness coming over me, I sat down with my head against a tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that drifted across the sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant an afternoon as I can ever remember. But the calmness of the sky, with its deep blue distance, seemed to shrivel me up into nothing. The world was so bright, and blue, and—uncaring! ”

“ The German officer was disposed to look lightly on the boy's offense, saying he would come all right, but the British Sergeant Major insisted that the lad be punished—and he was.
I thought of these things that night in the cell, and as I slept, propped up in the corner, I dreamed of that glad day when the invisible brotherhood will bind together all the world, and men will no more go out to kill and wound and maim their fellow-men, but their strength will be measured against sin and ignorance, disease and poverty, and against these only will they fight, and not against each other. ”

“ The soldiers passed along the middle of the street, chatting and laughing; we could hear their spurs clanking! Coming out of the light had probably dulled their sight, and they did not see us. We lay there until their footsteps had died away. Then we got up, and got out!
We were not hungry any more—at least we were so much more frightened than hungry that we only knew we were frightened, and we pushed our way on as fast as we could. That night was the first on which we had seen the moon. ”

“ There is a hard road ahead of us, a hard, steep road of sacrifice, and in it we must as a nation travel, although our feet are heavy and our eyes are dim. The war must be won; human liberty is worth the price—whatever the price may be! ”

“ Then I went to the crack and whispered.
"Hello!"
"Hello!" came back the answer; and looking through the crack I saw a lighted cell, and in it a man, the owner of the two bright eyes I had seen.
"What are you?" came a whisper.
"Canadian," I answered; "in for trying to escape."
By putting my ear to the crack, I could hear when he whispered.
"I am a Frenchman," he said in perfect English; "Malvoisin is my name, and this is my second attack of cells—for escaping—but I'll make it yet. Have you the rings? No? Well, you'll get them. Look at me." ”

“ The hospital clothes consisted of a pajama suit of much-faded flannelette, but I was glad to get into it, and doubly glad to get rid of my shirt and tunic, which were stiff on one side with dried blood. From the lazaret, where I had my bath, I could see the gun platform with its machine guns, commanding every part of the Giessen Prison. The guard pointed it out to me, to quiet my nerves, I suppose, and to scare me out of any thought of insubordination. However, he need not have worried—I was not thinking of escaping just then or starting an insurrection either. ”

“ But when, with the walking, we were warmed again, with the warmth came the sleepiness.
At dawn we crept into a thick bush, but the ground was damp and cold, and our sleepiness had left us. We ate some of our cold roast potatoes, and tried to sleep, for we dreaded to spend another night like the last one. In the afternoon the sun came out and warmed the air, so we had a fairly good sleep and started away at nightfall.
The night was clear and starlight, so the peat-bog which we encountered did not bother us so much, for we could see the holes and ridges. ”

“ If there had been even one gleam of light it wouldn't have been so bad, but I couldn't even see a gleam under the door, and every time I tried to sleep the silence bothered me—if I could only hear one sound, to tell me some one was alive and stirring about! ”

“ I whispered to myself; "this is the way men die—and that's what—I am not going to do!"
The sound of my own voice gave me courage. I then compelled my muscles to do their work, and stood up and walked up and down, though I noticed the wall got in my road sometimes. I had a long way to go yet, and I knew it depended now on my will-power.
My beard was long and my hair tangled and unkempt. I should have liked a shave and a hair-cut, but this is part of the punishment and has a depressing effect on the prisoner. It all helps to break a man down. ”

“ We were a little hazy as to the treatment accorded prisoners by a neutral country.
We still kept west, thinking of the bulge in the German boundary to the south of us. The road was smooth and hard, and we felt so good that we seemed to be able to go as fast as we liked. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten. A man on a bicycle rode past us and shouted a greeting to us, to which we replied with a good, honest English "Good-night," instead of the sullen grunt we had hitherto been using to hide our nationality.
Cows were plentiful that night, and we got apples, too, from the orchards near the road. ”

“ In a few minutes after leaving the bog we came to a small canal, which surprised me—there had been no other canal indicated on any map I had seen. It puzzled me for a minute; then a great joy swept over me! The maps I had seen were maps of Germany. This canal must be in Holland!
But I did not say this to Ted, for I wasn't sure. We undressed again—the third time that night—and swam the canal, and, dressing again, went on. Soon we found a finely settled country, with roads which improved as we went on, all the time. There were no trees, but the darkness still held, and we kept going. ”

“ They saw a country which seethed with discontent—Hyde Park agitators who railed at everything British, women who set fire to empty buildings, and destroyed mail-boxes as a protest against unfair social conditions—and they made the mistake of thinking that these discontented citizens were traitors who would be glad of the chance to stab their country to the heart. They knew that the average English found golf and cricket much more interesting than foreign affairs, so they were not quite prepared for that rush of men to the recruiting offices at the first call for volunteers! ”

“ On the evening of August 23d, when we started out after a fairly good day in a spruce thicket, we could see the lights of Bremen reflected in the sky. The lights of a city, with its homes, its stores, its eating-places, its baths, should be a welcome sight to wayfaring men who have been living on oats and turnips, but not for us, to whom a city meant only capture. ”

“ But my guard suddenly remembered something, and went into another hut, bringing back the uniform of "D. Smith, Vancouver." The name was written on the band of the trousers. D. Smith had died the day before, from lung trouble. The uniform had been disinfected, and hung in wrinkles. My face had the hospital pallor, and, with my long hair and beard, I know I looked "snaggy" like a potato that has been forgotten in a dark corner of the cellar.
When we came out of the lazaret, the few people we met on the road to the prison-camp broke into broad grins; some even turned and looked after us. ”

“ He was breathing hard, like a man going up a steep hill, and his hands were opening and closing. He walked over to the gendarme and glared in his face,—"What do I want to get back for?" he repeated in a steady voice, stretched tight like a wire, "I'll tell you—this is not any ordinary war, where brave men fight each other. This is a war against women and children and old men. I have fought with the Boers in Africa, but I bore them no ill-will—they fought like men and fought with men. I've been through Belgium—I've seen what you have done. ”

“ That night we came into the kitchen again and sat down at the long table. Every one was hungry and fell to eating without a word. No wonder the guard thought he had a quiet, inoffensive gang whose only thought at that moment was fried potatoes. The potatoes were good, hot from the frying-pan, and we ate as many as we could, for we believed it might be a long time before we again sat at a table. ”

“ In the first village we came to, they halted us, and we saw it was a dressing-station. The village was in ruins—even the town pump had had its head blown off!—and broken glass, pieces of brick, and plaster littered the one narrow street. The dressing was done in a two-room building which may have been a store. The walls were discolored and cracked, and the windows broken.
On a stretcher in the corner there lay a Canadian Highlander, from whose wounds the blood dripped horribly and gathered in a red pool on the dusty floor. His eyes were glazed and his face was drawn with pain. ”

“ In the morning, before any of us were awake, and about a quarter of an hour before the time to get up, a commotion started in our hut. German soldiers, dozens of them, came in, shouting to everybody to get up, and dragging the Russians out of bed. I was sleeping in an upper berth, but the first shout awakened me, and when I looked down I could see the soldiers flourishing their bayonets and threatening everybody. The Russians were scurrying out like scared rabbits, but the British, not so easily intimidated, were asking, "What's the row?" ”

“ They are stupidly boastful, inordinately fond of adulation and attention, and peevish and sulky when they cannot have their own way. I tried to imagine how a young German boy would have been treated by one of our doctors, and laughed to myself at the absurdity of the thought that they would make faces at him!
The young bugler was examined before I was, and as he was marched out of the room, the doctor who had made the faces grabbed at his kilt with an insulting gesture, at which the lad attempted to kick him. ”

“ Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat, made all the heat there was. The double row of berths lined the walls. Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally. Bert had a bowl of prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy. He was hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, "Lord! What do they understand?"
Every day we devised new ways of avoiding going to work. "Nix arbide" (no work) was our motto. The Russians, however, never joined us in any of our plans, neither did they take any part in the fun. ”

“ Englishmen may abuse their own country, but it is a different matter when the enemy is at the door. So they came,—the farmer, the clerk, the bank boy, the teacher, the student, the professional man, the writer, the crossing-sweeper, the cab-man,—high and low, rich and poor, old and young, they flocked to the offices, like the land-seekers in the West who form queues in front of the Homestead offices, to enter their land. ”

“ CHAPTER II THROUGH BELGIUM
It is strange how people act in a crisis. I mean, it is strange how quiet they are, and composed. We stood there on the top of the trench, without speaking, although I knew what had happened to us was bitterer far than to be shot. But there was not a word spoken. I remember noticing Fred McKelvey, when the German who stood in front of him told him to take off his equipment. Fred's manner was halting, and reluctant, and he said, as he laid down his rifle and unbuckled his cartridge bag, "This is the thing my father told me never to let happen." ”

“ It was for the good of Germany—to make her a greater nation—that these men should work—the longer hours the better—to help to reclaim the bad land, to cultivate the fields, to raise more crops to feed more soldiers to take more prisoners to cultivate more land to raise more crops.
It was perfectly clear to the Teutonic mind. No link in the chain must be broken. Deutschland über Alles!
At noon the Russians were still running—it is astonishing what the human machine can stand! ”