A correspondent sent the following from The Hague, April 20, 1918, regarding the German treatment of American prisoners:

From irrefutable evidence obtained by your correspondent, it is impossible to close one's eyes to what is going on in the hospitals and prisoners' camps in Germany. It is a mistake to believe that the treatment of prisoners and wounded in Germany has improved. On the contrary, it is as bad as it ever was, even worse.

The punishments inflicted are cruel and inhuman. As is well known, prisoners are absolutely dependent upon parcels for food and clothing. A favorite punishment is to withhold these from a whole camp or from large bodies of prisoners. It has been established beyond doubt that prisoners are employed behind the front and are under shellfire, in defiance of The Hague agreement of 1917.

Some prisoners never reach a camp in Germany for six months, meanwhile receiving no parcels of food. Their condition on arrival at camp, broken down and starving, is pitiable.

The evidence doesn't tend to show that American prisoners are receiving any preferential treatment. It is reported that the first American prisoners taken were hawked about the country, presumably to show them off to the populace. At Giessen, where, it would seem, American prisoners were kept on two separate occasions, they were prohibited any intercourse, even by sign language, with other prisoners and were not allowed to receive parcels or gifts from them.

British prisoners at Giessen asked if they could give parcels to Americans, and finally received permission to do so the following day. But the next day the American prisoners were moved away early in the morning.

British prisoners were able to detect Americans who had been captured any length of time by their appearance and by the state of their clothes. Until parcels for them arrived from Berne their state was deplorable.

A British noncommissioned officer recently obtained the signatures of the first ten Americans captured and talked with them. These men signed the scrap of paper in the hope that some news of them would reach the outside world. They were in poor physical health and somewhat despondent.

A few recent examples from a large amount of sworn evidence follow:

In February, 1918, 4,000 men were sent from a Westphalian camp to within thirty kilometers behind the front. Their guards ran away to escape the British shrapnel fire.

The state of prisoners coming from the big Somme battle in the first week of the present month was deplorable. Their wounds had not been dressed in many cases for more than ten days. Owing to the lack of dressing, British comrades bandaged their wounds with old towels and shirts.

It was formally announced by the German authorities in Camp Bonn on April 13 last that two British soldiers, R. and B., had been shot near Minden for not stopping talking when ordered to do so.

In November, 1917, men were brought into the hospital at M. continually, having been wounded by shrapnel from behind the lines. Wounded men lay for three or four weeks unattended and grossly neglected.

Much of the sworn evidence is so repugnant that it could not be published. There has been talk of reprisals on American prisoners, and even foreigners born in America are included in these threatened reprisals.