The Hague Convention declares that pris oners may be set at liberty on parole if the laws of their country allow it, but those so liberated and recaptured while bearing arms against the government which released them are not en tided to the treatment reserved for prisoners of war. The Convention does not deal at all with the subject of exchanges. The Hague Confer ence of 1899 made it the duty of belligerents at the outbreak of hostilities to establish a bureau of information to answer inquiries about pris oners of war held by them, to collect and keep all objects of personal use, valuables, letters, etc., found on the battlefields and to furnish information to the parties interested regarding prisoners who have been released on parole, or exchanged, or who have escaped or died in hos pitals, etc. The provision was renewed in 1907 and the scope of the bureau enlarged. Letters, money orders and postal parcels intended for prisoners of war, or dispatched by them, are exempt from postal charges in the countries of origin and destination as well as in those through which they pass. Finally, The Hague Convention requires that at the conclusion of peace the repatriation of prisoners shall be car ried out as quickly as possible.
In all great wars the problem of caring for prisoners has been a difficult one and there have been few in which one or both belligerents were not charged with violating the law regard ing the treatment of prisoners. Naturally dur ing the World War when the number of pris oners taken ran into the millions the prob lem was very great and the charges and counter-charges in respect to ill-treatment have been numerous. Fortunately, in the early months of the war, arrangements were entered into between most of the belligerent govern ments by which each consented to permit representatives of neutral legations and em bassies to visit their prison camps, conduct in spections and make reports to the governments concerned regarding the conditions of the camps in which their nationals were held as prisoners and the kind of treatment they were receiving. Until the United States entered the war, representatives of its legations and embas sies in England, Germany, France, Russia and Austria performed this service. They visited the camps without giving previous notice, in spected the barracks, hospitals, kitchens, recrea tion grounds, etc., conversed with the prisoners, heard their complaints, made recommendations to the camp commandants and in this way were able to bring about many necessary re forms and improvements. Their reports con stitute the most trustworthy sources of infor mation regarding the treatment of prisoners that are available.
At the outset the various belligerent govern ments issued general regulations concerning the treatment which they proposed to accord pris oners held by them and those promulgated by the British and French governments an nounced that no distinction would be made be tween the treatment of interned civilians and regular military prisoners. These rules are
quite elaborate and cannot even be summarized within the brief limits of this article. They re lated to housing, food, clothing, medical attend ance, pay of officers, wages to be paid prisoners employed, postal facilities, recreation facilities and the like. In the beginning, serious com plaints were made in England in regard to the housing facilities provided for British prison ers in Germany and the reports of representa tives of the American embassy confirm in many instances the truth of the charges. So far as possible, prisoners captured by Germany were housed in the military barracks but during the early months of the war the number of prison ers captured by the German armies attained such proportions that it became necessary to house them in tents or in hastily constructed buildings which were poorly heated and equipped. As a consequence, the sufferings of the prisoners in the German camps during the first winter of the war were particularly severe. Unfortunately also the camp sites were not well selected, some of them being located on the sandy plains in North Germany where the cli mate was especially rigorous. According to the reports of the American representatives prison ers in England and France were better housed and their exposure to cold was less serious. During the first year of the war there were many complaints that German prisoners were inadequately clothed and that the supply of blankets was wholly insufficient. The American inspectors found this charge to be true in vari ous camps and called the attention of the Ger man government to the facts.
The most serious complaint, however, re lated to the quantity and quality of food rations served in the prison camps of Germany. Brit ish and French prisoners complained that the food was not only inadequate in amount but was of such a quality that they could not eat it. Food experts attached to the American em bassy found this to be true in some of the camps but as to others they reported that there was no substantial ground for complaint. By the beginning of the year 1916 British and French prisoners were depending almost entirely upon the food which they received from home through the parcel post. Russian prisoners, however, appear to have received little or no food through this channel and were compelled, therefore, to subsist on the meagre ration fur nished by the German government, which as the years passed became hopelessly insufficient.