A Renter message from Amsterdam published in the papers of
Tuesday indicated that the German Government have finally refused to ratify the Hague Agreement about the exchange of prisoners between Great Britain and Germany. We fear the report is only too likely to be true, for German action has been tending for a long time in this direction. German official statements of course try to put the blame upon our Government, but we have very little
doubt that Germany has tried to insist upon extracting a guarantee from us in regard to the Germans in China. This of course is an impossible condition. It is quite useless to blame the Government here, as some people continue to do, if all the obstacles in the way of an exchange of prisoners are created by Germany. The same thing applies to the case of the British prisoners in Turkey. The real difficulty, in fact the only difficulty, is that the Turks go on abso- lutely refusing an exchange of prisoners because they are instructed by Germany to do so. The Germans in their desire to keep Turkey by their side have no desire to let her do anything that might be pleasing to Great Britain.
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