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A little improvement in the régime to which they were
subjected, a few months of clever propaganda
corroborated by the news that arrived of Russia and the
Russian Army in a state of dissolution, sufficed to make
these same men accept from those they had hitherto
regarded as their tormentors the good news of the
abrogation of all discipline, of the integral sharing of all the
goods of this world, of the Bolshevist paradise which
appealed to their native heedlessness and their vacillating
minds. Amongst these people one heard of astounding
fraternisations, of inconceivable confusion of ideas; one
did not hear of any men coming out of these German
concentration camps with the wish to place themselves
at the disposal of their unfortunate country, or at that of
the Allies who had just opened the doors of their
prisons.
The Russian people being so far above base
sentiments of indignation and reprisal, in whose name shall I
draw up accusations and quote at the tribunal of history
the abettors of the inhuman treatment inflicted on our
prisoners?
Speaking generally and as far as I can judge by
sifting the evidence we received in Stockholm, this
treatment was truly detestable during the first year of
the war. The conviction disseminated among the
German people that the war was due to an attack by the
Allies, the ravages and the excesses committed by our
troops in some areas in East Prussia,[1] the opinion
prevailing in the German High Command that the war must
be ferocious in order to be short—all this influenced the
fate of the prisoners of war. Moreover, the very number
of these prisoners, larger than any one could have
foreseen, made their position more appalling; herded for the
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