SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
INdics in This column Joss not necessarily pescludo tubloguost
My German Prisons. By Captain H. G. Gilliland. (Hodder and Stoughton. 6s. net.)—Captain Gilliland's narrative of his experiences as a wounded prisoner in Germany from 1914 to last year, when he escaped, should be widely read. It is a terrible story of the brutality and petty malevolence which seem tc characterize the German ruling caste. After the author was captured he saw the enemy deliberately bayoneting our wounded. He had to wait for days before his own wounds received attention, and shared the miseries of starvation in cattle-trucks which se many of our poor fellows had to endure. At Bischofswerds and at Ingolstadt the ruffianly officials subjected the prisoners to continual persecution. But for the parcels from home the men could not have survived. Captain Gilliland's account of his escape, after jumping off a train, is exciting.—With his book we may commend also Captain J. A. L. Caunter's Thirteen Daps: an Escape from a German Prison (Bell, 4s. 6d. net), describing in detail his adventurous flight from a camp in Hanover. Both authors point out that our officers In trying to escape give indirect military assistance to the Allies. The more men that the Germans have to detail for guarding camps and patrolling roads and bridged the fewer they can spare for reinforcing their battered divisions at the front. Yet the enemy tries hard to keep his officer prisoners, so that they may not convey home information as to the state of Germany.
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