Hague agreement on prisoners of war

On 2 July 1917, at The Hague, delegates of Britain and Germany signed an agreement on prisoners of war, both soldiers and civilians. It was the first meeting of representatives of the two governments at one table since the beginning of the war. Until then all prisoner questions had been settled by exchanges of notes through neutral states, which took months. The British delegation was headed by Lord Newton, Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office and head of its prisoners of war department. He was accompanied by Lieutenant-General Herbert Belfield, Director of Prisoners of War at the War Office, and Mr Justice Robert Younger. The German delegation was led by General Friedrich of the Prussian War Ministry. The talks were chaired by a representative of the Dutch government.

Talking to the enemy

Newton recalled that in June 1917 he heard from several quarters that the Germans would be willing to discuss prisoner questions at The Hague. He decided that, in view of the constant delays, disputes and threats of reprisals, a direct conversation was worth trying. News of the delegates’ departure caused indignation in the British press, as some commentators regarded any meeting with the Germans as treason. Newton himself later reported in the House of Lords that the Germans had behaved “very correctly”, that there had been no question of fraternisation, and that the talks had been conducted frankly in English and German, without recourse to a third language. Agreement was reached in about a week, and according to a British encyclopaedia of 1922 it was concluded while still in June and merely signed on 2 July.

The questions to be settled were urgent. In 1917 both sides increasingly applied reprisals against prisoners for real or alleged wrongs done to their own men in captivity. The exchanges of seriously wounded men and older civilians had also stopped, because after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare the British ceased sending ships with prisoners across the North Sea. Among those unable to return to Britain were older civilians from the Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin, who had already been promised such an exchange.

What was agreed

The most important part of the agreement was an offer by the Netherlands, made soon after the talks began. The Dutch government agreed to receive up to 16,000 British and German prisoners and to keep them interned until the end of the war, as Switzerland had been doing since 1916. 7,500 places were allotted to sick and wounded soldiers, 6,500 to officers and NCOs who had spent at least 18 months in captivity, and 2,000 to sick civilians: 1,600 Germans and 400 Britons. The unequal division of civilians was explained by the fact that Britain held several times more German civilians than Germany held British ones. For the first time, too, so-called barbed-wire disease, the mental exhaustion caused by long captivity, was recognised as grounds for internment in a neutral country.

Private soldiers who had spent 18 months in captivity were not included in this group, although the British pressed for it. Newton later explained that the Germans did not intend to give up anyone they could put to work, whereas officers and NCOs could not be compelled to work. The 7,500 wounded and sick, however, were to be mainly private soldiers. The two sides undertook to resume the existing exchanges of seriously wounded soldiers, sick civilians and civilians over 45, and, until milder medical criteria were drawn up, to apply those in force between France and Germany.

It was also agreed that the punishment for a simple attempt to escape would not exceed two weeks, and in more serious cases two months. Sentences imposed on prisoners before 1 August were to be suspended until the end of the war. New reprisals against prisoners could be applied only four weeks after they had been announced. The Germans promised faster delivery of parcels and prompt notification of captures.

A difficult start

The agreement required the approval of both governments. On 6 July a government spokesman in the House of Commons spoke only of a “provisional agreement”, and on 25 July Newton complained in the House of Lords that despite three enquiries Berlin had still not replied. The Germans approved the agreement only at the end of July. The port through which the prisoners were to sail remained unsettled. The Germans insisted on Southwold, which the British considered wholly unsuitable. After returning to London Newton obtained from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Edward Carson, consent to Hull, but in August the Germans objected to that port too.

The agreement was therefore carried out very slowly. According to historians, exchanges and the transport of internees to the Netherlands on a larger scale began only at the beginning of 1918, by ships between Boston in Lincolnshire and Rotterdam. By the end of the war far fewer people had been interned in the Netherlands than the limit of 16,000 provided for. In June 1918 delegations of the two countries met again at The Hague and extended the provisions of 1917.