People from other countries, aside from the United States and Switzerland, also visited Handforth, generally for diplomatic or journalistic reasons. During the summer of 1915, for example, Einar Holten-Nielsen, a writer and former Danish army officer made a visit to Handforth and to the POW camp in nearby Leigh. As with most of the other visitors to Handforth, Holten-Nielsen had a generally positive view of the camp. In an article for the Danish newspaper, Politiken, he suggested that Handforth gave “less of an impression of being a POW camp, and more the sense of a large emigration hostel”. The camp, therefore, was perhaps not somewhere of great appeal, but the conditions were to be interpreted as pleasantly bearable rather than overtly oppressive.
The Danish newspaper, Politiken, which ran Holten-Nielsen’s report on Handforth