The War Cabinet published on Friday week its decision to
appoint Sir George Cave as Chairman of the Inter-Departmental Prisoners of War Committee, and intimated that British prisoners of war in Bulgaria would be immediately released. The rest of the communique must have disappointed people who have friends in German prison camps, for it was occupied largely with discussion
of and protest against Germany's demand regarding Germans in
China—a demand so preposterously irrelevant that it never was worth discussion even when it originated. A more useful, though a terrible, document, published on the same day, was an order by Ludendorff enjoining systematic cruelty to French prisoners of war newly captured—" as little food as possible" and "the severest labour" for extended hours. Apparently the Hague agreement for exchange of prisoners has broken down ; so its publication is of trivial importance.
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