Free Agent of Peace by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

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    7th They have had no opportunity of having their fling – doing their bit – showing their loyalty.
    8th Consequently try to shew loyalty to their country by the only means open to them viz putting themselves into a state of mental hostility to everything and everybody about them – even the food is ‘hostile’.
    9th To maintain this mental hostility at white heat is before long to become mentally deranged.
    Dr Ella Scarlett Synge * has issued a good report of this Camp, so it is hardly necessary for me to dwell upon what I soon saw were the less pressing and important features of the life. I mean the kitchens, the food itself, the Canteen, the sleeping and living arrangements, Washing and Sanitation.

    I thought the food good and excellently cooked and as much as the conditions in Germany made possible. Potatoes and fish that day and both were first rate. In a smaller kitchen men could, for 1d or 2d, have camp food fried or done up in some way and their own English parcel food also cooked for them.
    The parcel delivery office was an immense business – dealing out some 1,250 parcels every morning. 39,000 parcels ** had arrived during the month of my visit. In all the time the Camp had been running only two or three parcels had been missed out of this vast number streaming in.
    There were many amusements golf, football, sports of various kinds – a great space for all this – Cinema, Theatre and Company performing constantly, arts and crafts – an Exhibition of work proceeding – small gardens, poultry keeping – occupations of a more serious nature. Shops of many trades – two dentists, Police force of fifty strong. University attended by 250 with 9 or 10 professors, a library, hall, separate rooms for languages nicely furnished. YWCA hall, Protestant and Catholic Churches and a Restaurant nicely arranged where the older or more weakly might take their meals.
    I thought in comparison with the many blessings of the Camp (as Camps go) that the sleeping accommodations came off worst though that was not bad as in the Boer Camps. I thought the men kept their barracks very dirty, and I told them so. Their excuse was ‘no time’!!! Yet there were hundreds of merchant seamen there well accustomed to keep the deck of a ship spotless.
    I saw the hospital for temporary illnesses and the doctor – a long and rather low building which did not look very inviting. There have, I am told, been only about six deaths in the camp and the health is good.
    It was a long day. I seemed to be ‘taking in’ at every pore and felt much exhausted. At the end I asked leave to speak a few words to Capt Powell and his ‘Aide’ and I sat down and told them how much we felt for them and how none better than I knew the awfulness of Camp life. I told them of my experience of sixteen years ago – and of the awful camps we gave the Boer Women who with their children lay down and died without a murmur. I assured them that by comparison they were fortunate in Ruhleben, but that it was a hateful system and I would do my best in London to obtain release or exchange first for over 45 – then for all. They must not think they would be forgotten etc etc.
    I afterwards wrote a little letter to the Camp – on these lines and showing how they too, each one, held something of the honour of England in their hands to uphold or to mar as really any soldier in the trenches. This letter I sent to the Foreign Office open to be transmitted to Count Schwerin if he thought fit to communicate it to the Camp. I wrote it because the men seemed to me to need above all things a mental and spiritual tonic.
    Large numbers of the men drew up to see us drive away; it gave a horrible pang to go away and leave them there – such a forlorn and despairing atmosphere hung about them. It was one of the most painful moments of my life and as