IRISH PRISONERS OF WAR AND SIR ROGER CASEMENT.
jTO THE EDITOR OF TIES " SPECTATOR.") went recently to visit some of the first lot of our prisoners of war who were exchanged, and who are in the Brompton Consumptive Hospital. An Irish Guardsman told me most of the following story. Some details, which I have pieced in, I got another day from another man, a Munster Fusilier, who is in another ward. He corroborated the former's story, but did not take the indulgent view he did. " I hope I live to see them well punished," he said, when I made some excuses for the poor devils. Here is the story—as far as my memory serves me,I give the actual words and expressions used by the two men: " When we were first taken prisoners we were very well fed— that was at X—nothing was too good for Irishmen ; but when we got to Y--- we were starved. I don't suppose we got a tenth part of what we had been having to eat. Indeed, 'twas only by the dint of leaning against one another that we could stand at all. Yell have heard of that fella Casemint ?
when they had us well starved Casemint came to the camp, and we was all marched into a hall and there he talked to us— promised us every sort of fine thing if we would become the Kaiser's Irish Guard. Oh, even if Germany was beaten—of course she wouldn't be, but if she was—we'd all be given free passages to Ameriky and £10 apiece in our pockets. Oh, we listened to him very quiet, but when he'd finished if he hadn't had German soldiers round him not two bits of him would
have been left together, weak as we were, to get out of the camp. However, either a bit he got three fellas to come. He had them dressed up in lovely green uniforms all over shamrocks, and he gave them a grand blow-out with beer and cigars and all sorts, and we was marched down—starving—and set to watch them eating."—" Was that all he got ? " said I.—" Oh, 'twas not ; he got about thirty or forty, I suppose."—" Oh, my," said I, " that was bad."—" Oh, but wait till you hear what happened in the latther end. He took the lads away, and when he had them swore in he give them a couple of days on leave in Berlin. Well, now, if me lads was German when they were sober, when they were drunk they were British " (" British " was the word ho used, which much surprised me), " and nothing would do them but to march down the streets of Berlin singing ' Rule, Britannia' and ' God Save the King.' Oh, they're doing hard punishment, I'm told, in a German prison—but 'twas
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