prisoners at alJ. I wish you would go 

 ■and see how we treat them. Perhaps you 

 jvill think we are not kind enough. It 

 cannot be pleasant to be a prisoner any- 

 w.here.' 



Scenes at the War, Prisons. ^ 



•;'They gave me passes tp all the plaTces 

 of detention, and I visited four of them, 

 and had such 



• that I made 



prcihended phase 

 visits. It 



iadde' 



S'epresslng to see the^ sorrow and. chagrin 

 ' of good and loyal Russians, the humilia- 

 tion of honest patriotic men who loved 

 their country and their sovereign, and 

 who could do no more for the cause- 

 who had not committed crimes, yet were 

 deprived of their liberty, or rather re- 

 strained like boys in boarding school. 

 And it was exasperating to see, as at' 

 Hamadera, Ijelow Osaka, ■ 'JO.OOO soldiers 

 from Port Arthur, idling the days away, 

 feeding and feasting and playing games, 

 even dancing to pass lihe time, while the 

 mov Japanese toiled in the nelds beyond 

 and Japanese women and boys earned a 

 slender wage pushing bread carts down 

 ti-om Osaka to help feed this army of 

 loafers. There was certainly something 

 wrong about that. Then there were all 

 those Russian officers and men whom 

 their companions scorned for deliberately 

 going over to the enemy in each engage-, 

 ment, glad to surrender and accept the 

 ea,se and Idleness of prison life, rather 

 than face any more of bhe hardships and 

 dangers of campaigning. 



"Some of the officers were Intelligent, 

 cultivated, broad-minded men, capable of 

 accepting and appreciating the situation 

 Others whimpered, lamented, reviled and 

 openly Insulted the Japanese at every op-: 

 portunlty. . Some .officers occupied them- 

 selves in studious pursult.s* and lived hs 

 gentlemen; others laid aside all veneer 

 of civilization, and lived and dressed as 

 untidily as Digger Indians, and wlien the 

 restrictions were lightened, descended to 

 depths of drunkenness and dissipation 

 that made every Anglo-Saxon ashamed of 

 hl-s color and race. I met the wives of 

 two officers, who were residents with 

 their prisoner husbands at one garrison 

 town. Ihese officers Were engineers who 

 had been for some y^ars constructing 

 forts, docks and public works at Port 

 Arthur, Dalny and Vladivostok, and had 

 •come over to live in Japan when work 

 was suspended durihg.thfe winters. Theirs 

 ^..Y'^'"'' queer -and unique sort of 

 -prison life to me. • . .', 



An Illogical Situation, , 



!'It Is Wholly illogical. Something ought 

 to be done about it. There -should not 

 be prisoners of war at all in this century. 

 It is all a survival of primitive war when 

 they were knocked on the head or sold as 

 slaves— their heads brought home to be 

 counted, or the captives dragged through 

 ,v,the streets In the conqueror's- triumphal 

 «feprocession. . .The Joss of these 70,000 mensi 

 fSdid not seriously cripple the^ ^Russian ' 

 M~Jorces. It bore more heavily in'i way on? 

 ,?. ^tlie Japanese,..,wluQ, ;_Jmd to'', provide for? 

 Ihese foreign visitors more elaborately 

 tiian for their own troops, who had all 

 the bother and expense ot providing for- 

 eign food for them, of detailing their own 

 best and most trusted troops to guard 

 them. The .minister of war was reallv 

 the head of a great chain of foreign iio- 

 .tels— twenty-eight hotels in all— and it was 

 .two years after the departure of the last 

 .boarder before the board bill was paid " 

 "Did not The Hague conference last 

 summer do anything relative to prisoners 

 ' P.f war?" , 

 -■"No. Only the Koreans and myself took I 

 The Hague conference seriously. I had 

 supposed that The Hague conference was 

 called by President Roosevelt purposely i 

 , to discuss the questions that had been' 

 jralBcd during the war. I was astonlslied i 

 to find Europe sneering at the peace con- 

 gress before it met, Ignoring It while it 



'THE EVENING STAB. 



^ With Sunday Morning Bdltlon. 



W A S H I N O T O W , 

 " SATTJBDAY April 25, 1908 



TSEODOBE W. NO YES Editor 



U Catered a> .eoond-clus mall matter at the post 

 ihi sfflce at Washlneton, D. 0. 



