16 MARCH 1918, Page 12

" STICKING IT."

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—I think there may be those amongst your readers to whom the following extracts from letters received by me lately from one of our splendid men who has been for the past three and a half years in one of the worst camps in Germany may be of interest, and a very fine example to many of us. Earlier on this same man suffered solitary confinement for two months for stating a little of what conditions were—I have the postcard they allowed to pass, and then took their revenge. I quote :-

" The bread they give us is half sand, but if we complain they say it is good enough for English swine; and if we are ill (and I lay for one long week in agony—being refused either doctor or medicines) they blame the home narcels—without which we would starve."

Yet this man writes now as follows; I quote from two letters lately received :- _ " I generally keep the Boys lively; we can't afford to be sad, though we are prisoners of war." (In parenthesis I may add that he is a martyr to rheumatism and indigestion.) " We are not down-hearted, so please give this message to the Boys over there. Even although everything is not going well with the Allies, they must keep their hearts up, and never mind if they are only left to go on by themselves."

Lately lie got the offer—as an N.C.O.—to go to an N.C.O. Camp. " But," he writes, " I refused. I will remain with the Boys with whom I came till the end. if they can't be exchanged as well as Corporals—who have done more fighting than the Corporals —then I shall stay with the Boys. They have suffered; so have I. They must yet suffer; so will I. But we can stick it; we are through the worst of it now, I think, unless the parcels were to stop."

This man is only twenty-seven, with a young wife to whom he is devoted; she is worthy of his devotion. They are quite poor.— I