Both reports of Dr. Taylor [Miscel. No. 18 (1916) and Miscel. No. 21 (1916)] are important studies of the question of nutrition, and his short discussion (No. 18, p. 4) of the psychological aspects of monotonous diet and the nutritional effects of internment is worth careful attention. “A diet that would be tolerated if the subject were at liberty may become intolerable under conditions of imprisonment. There is a large personal equation operative in this direction. The soldier imbued with a high sense of his value to his country and of the justice of his cause will endure a monotonous diet that would not be endurable in the prisoner overwhelmed with disappointment and crushed with sorrow.” These considerations are obviously of general application.
Mr. Gerard, in a note of June 28, 1916 [Miscel. No. 25 (1916)], animadverts strongly on the bad accommodation still provided at Ruhleben. The letter is rather strikingly different in tone from his other reports on Ruhleben.
It is intolerable that people of education should be herded six together in a horse’s stall, and in some of the lofts the bunks touch one another. The light for reading is bad, and reading is a necessity if these poor prisoners are to be detained during another winter. In the haylofts above the stables the conditions are even worse.[24]
Bishop Bury’s account (“My Visit to Ruhleben,” p. 30) reads:
I don’t know whether it was our internment at Newbury,[25] the race-course for Reading, or our using race-courses, such as Kempton Park, for the training of our own men, which caused Ruhleben to be chosen in November, 1914, as a suitable place for civilians’ internment.... Without any description of mine it may be easily understood what they had to suffer until proper arrangements were made.... The loose boxes are now properly fitted with bunks, some being larger than others. The large corridor, with its stone floor, gives air and space, the lofts particularly being extremely well adapted now for their present purpose. I prefer the lofts to the boxes, because they have corridors out of which one can look, whereas the windows in the boxes are usually far above the ground. I went to tea more frequently in the boxes, and on one occasion we sat down sixteen in number—rather a crowd—but we were quite comfortable.