This agreement was ratified
by the British and German Governments and thereafter for a long
time we worked under its provisions and in most questions dealt
direct with the War Department.
Of course, before this meeting I had managed to get permission
to visit the camps of Ruhleben and Doeberitz near Berlin; and
Mr. Michaelson, our consul at Cologne, and Mr. Jackson and others
at the Embassy had been permitted to visit certain camps. But
immediately preceding the meeting on the fourth of March and
while matters were still being discussed we were compelled to
a certain extent to suspend our visits.
In the first days of the war it was undoubtedly and unfortunately
true that prisoners of war taken by the Germans, both at the time
of their capture and in transit to the prison camps, were often
badly treated by the soldiers, guards or the civil population.
The instances were too numerous, the evidence too overwhelming,
to be denied. In the prison camps themselves, owing to the peculiar
system of military government in Germany, the treatment of the
prisoners varied greatly.
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