THE GERMAN PRISONERS
Monday’s “Daily Telegraph” contained an interesting article on the German prisoners who are employed at Evesham. The writer describes them as alert and smiling, and continues: “They were some of the prisoners of what, it is hoped, will be a steadily larger army of workers who will help in the all important task of producing food for a land which has need of it. Evesham has not yet had much experience of them – just a week - but I find only one cry as the result of the experience it has had – “Let us have more.” There are at present 80 prisoners in the town. There are, already, applications from growers for between two and three hundred, and there is ample work to do in this fertile vale (work that, as Mr Lloyd George has reminded us, must be done now) for all the prisoners that can come.”
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
After quoting the favourable testimony of growers to the value of the work done by the Germans, the writer goes on to say: “Evesham began agitating for its German prisoner workers four months ago. The military representative, Mr E . Cholmondeley, with Mr J R Wright, to whose unselfish work more than anything else, Evesham growers say, they are indebted, for the successful issue of the negotiations, drew up a scheme which, in due course, went to the War Office, and Captain Fellowes, of the Southern Command, paid a visit to the town and arranged for the Drill Hall to be the barracks for the prisoners. In the ordinary course the men would have been in Evesham at the beginning of this year. But just at this time occurred the change of Government, and the new Ministry put the matter in the hands of the County War Agricultural Association, of which a Food Production Sub-Committee was formed. It is this Sub-Committee which, with the loyal aid of the German Prisoner of War Labour Committee (the body formed in December to promote the scheme of the previous month), has now brought these prisoners to the land, and is being urged to bring more.