Ill Usage of Prisoners
Ill Usage of Prisoners is an article published in the Daily Express on 29 may 1915.
Ill Usage of Prisoners
THE COWARDICE OF THE GERMAN METHOD.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has prefaced and annotated a number of documents, taken principally from the White-paper issued by the Foreign Office, and contained in a pamphlet. entitled "The Story of British Prisoners," published by the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organisation.
"The total number of Germans on whom we could lay our hands is far higher than the total number of British in Germany,"
says Sir A. Conan Doyle. "Among them is the son of the chief sea murderer, at present leading a life of ease at Donington Hall. These men might be our hostages.
"But how can we kick, beat, freeze, or starve innocent men who are in our power because our own men have been kicked, beaten, frozen, and starved? It is not possible. Luxuries, indeed, could, and should, be sternly cut down, but personal ill-usage is out of the question.
"There lies the cowardice of the German method. It is not only directed against helpless nation, for honour and self-respect forbid us to reply.
"What, then, can we do? We can circulate the facts among neutrals as one more proof of the absolute degeneration of the German character. We can also make the truth known to soldiers, so that the torture of their comrades may warm their hearts in the day of battle and teach them that it is better to die on the field than fall into the cruel hands of German gaolers.
"Finally, we can let the sense of wrong sink into our own minds, that we may be steeled in our determination to have no compromise with such enemies. We need no childish rubber stamps or brooches with blasphemous inscriptions, but deep in our silent souls we vow that we shall not close the book until this people shall have paid the debt, collectively and individually, for their crimes."
