Review:The Story of British Prisoners/Christopher Roden
This review of the monograph "The Story of British Prisoners", by Arthur Conan Doyle was written by Christopher Roden and published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 9, june 1999).
Review
- The Story of British Prisoners
- Prefaced and Annotated by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Monograph #12. Cambridge: Rupert Books, 1999; 50pp.
- ISBN: 1-902791-02-9; £10 (Limited to 400 copies).
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
The most recent publication in Rupert Books' Monograph Series reprints the Conan Doyle prefaced and annotated wartime propaganda, The Story of British Prisoners. Here is presented first-hand evidence of prisoners, eye-witness reports, and narrations of German defectors, all designed to rouse anti-German feeling in Britain during the first months of World War I. In his detailed Afterword, Philip Weller points out that by the time this propaganda appears, general conditions in prison camps in both Germany and Britain had improved considerably.
There is an inevitable bias in the tone of the annotations made by Conan Doyle. Weller is careful to note, for example, that whilst Germany was condemned by ACD in his introduction for its use of poison gas, no mention is made that the British government authorised its use by their own troops within a few days of the German attack. But then propaganda has to be one-sided, doesn't it?
Despite the bias, however, the accounts included in this pamphlet are sufficiently horrific in their own right to remind us of the sacrifices that were made in the name of Right and Freedom. For that alone it was worth ACD's effort.
Once again, Philip Weller provides an informative and accomplished Afterword, which places the pamphlet within its historical perspective, besides imparting much detail on POW camp conditions and the treatment the prisoners received on both sides.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
