Relics

From refugees who arrived in London last week, with additional details flashed from Montevideo, came the story of what happened to 300 seamen and ship's officers taken from nine vessels captured and sunk by the late Admiral Graf Spee during her brief life as a sea raider. Some of them had been placed for a time aboard a secretly built auxiliary warship, the Altmark, a 12,000-tonner disguised as a tanker but hiding three 6-inch guns behind shutters and capable of 25 knots. Besides fueling the Spee (the last time, five days before the battle of Punta del Este), the Altmark was fitted with prison cells in her holds. Here the Spec's captives were--perhaps still are--verminously herded, scantily fed, given only one quart of water each per day for drinking and washing. Officers are humiliated by being forced to do latrine duty. During brief hours of exercise on deck, German guards cover the prisoners with machine guns. Since mid-December the British Navy has sought the grisly Altmark, wandering somewhere on the high seas or anchored obscurely.

Germany hotly denied maltreatment aboard the Altmark, but one commentator said: "Of course, we could not build roof gardens . . . for our enemies."

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