D'Arici's wife had been stranded in Panderma, where all

her goods were searched. I managed to get through to her

some letters from d'Arici, and to effect her transfer to Stamboul.

Moreover, d'Arici, sport that he was, had still with

him some valuable plans of mines, and much secret information

about politics with reference to Bulgaria. These he wanted

to get rid of to his wife, and not to destroy. Having satisfied

myself with his outline of defence in case things went wrong,

I hunted and found his wife, after many adventures, in the

heart of Pera. The guard followed, believing her the proprietress

of a therapeutic bath. We had arranged a rendezvous

in the waiting-room. I had to bring the packet back, as no

chance offered for giving it, and it was, of course, certain

death for her and for him, if not for me, to have been in possession

of such interesting documents. I felt my weight of

responsibility, but resolved to try again. The second time

she was dressed quite differently. I found her flat, and racing

up the stairs ahead of the posta, burst in and gave her the

packet. She pushed this down her blouse, and the next

second the posta very angrily forced the door open. While he

was suspiciously looking around I bolted off again, and, of

course, he had to follow me. My excuse that I was hungry

was fairly feeble. Anyway he was appeased with a good meal,

and I intended not to have him again if I could help. D'Arici

was delighted, and I, on the other hand, now relied on getting

away politically without escaping. The next day I got a

private message from Ismid Bey, a tall, smart, and very

modernized Turk doing A.D.C. to Djemal Pasha. He was

very occupied with keeping up the importance of his chief,

whose influence on the Triumvirate wavered at times. He

had just returned from a voyage on the Black Sea, and in his

cute Turkish way was most interesting as well as eager for

news. He was half French. On entering he barked at my

posta, who, startled and terrified beyond words at my claiming

acquaintance with so august a person, literally cowed down,

and waited outside.

We were in the Florence Restaurant, and had more or less

privacy. There I learned for the first time of the outer expression

of Bolshevism. Everywhere around the Black Sea where

he had been, murders had just taken place on a wholesale

scale. He told me a story of his difficulty in getting an interview

with people in the southern ports. They were invariably

killed just before, the reason, he was told, being that any one

who wanted to interview a man wearing a collar must be anti-Bolshevik.

Ismid showed me excellent and recent photos of

the French front, and assured me that from personal inspection,

he thought the German _bandobast_ so gigantic and their defences

so colossal that we could never get through. It was, however,

all to an end. He wanted me to interpret to him the British

official attitude to Turkey, and gave me to understand that

for himself he wanted peace; in fact, he had just come from a

peace meeting, but Enver was against all this. We had as

yet no big victory in the West that might justify a Turkish

_bouleversement_. He spoke of financial difficulties, and how

much depended on a new arrangement of parties immediately.

Djemal had quarrelled with the German commander

in Palestine, and wanted Turkey to seize the whole of the

Adrianople _vilayet_. In fact, against German orders he had

insisted on a full Turkish Army Corps being stationed there,

and he disliked the German military preponderance in the

capital.

As for the Russian Fleet, Ismid indignantly denied that

they were German, and said the Turks had seized them on

threat of engagement, as the Germans had hoisted the German

flag on the fleet after putting German crews aboard. He

despised the German as being too stolid to understand Turkish

mentality. This bore out what he had told Newcombe, that

the Germans imposed tactics of too high a tactical standard

on the Turkish forces after Gaza. I got a good deal more

information, which I hoped Newcombe and I might turn to

account.

D'Arici was amused at all this. We played bridge and

plotted for more news. In the meantime I had visited Forkheimer's

home, and persuaded the posta to remain downstairs.

My life now was as different as possible from what it had been

during all the preceding years.

I cashed £50 in cheques a month, and got out twice or

three times a week. Turks began to know me in the street.

Forkheimer and I, seated on his balcony overlooking the

Bosphorus, sometimes snatched a few short minutes from

captivity. We both wondered what our mutual acquaintance,

Goodhart, an American we knew at Cambridge, was now

doing. His people gave me most excellent tea. I was much

interested in the pertinacity of these good people in believing

Germany was absolutely right in the war, and we quite wrong.

One avoided as much politics as possible, but they were

rather keen.

About this time Colonel Newcombe and I formulated a

scheme by which the British Government and our brother

officers might be saved a considerable amount of money. The

exchange at this time with the Dutch Embassy was 130, and

in the bazaar privately as much as 200 could be got. These

cheques could be exchanged again at a huge profit in Switzerland,

and a great deal went into the pockets of foreign changers.

Our plan was to get a loan of 10,000 liras a month, or 50,000

in a lump sum from the Ottoman Bank on the security of

British officers and approved of by the senior British officer,

at the rate of 250.

[Illustration: DJEMAL PACHA, ONE OF THE TRIUMVIRATE WHOSE A.D.C.,

ISMID BEY, MET ME SECRETLY IN STAMBOUL]

The _Chef de Renseignement_ of the Ottoman Bank was

agreeable. In fact, the bank would have made largely on the

transaction, and, while helping us by ready money, and saving

the Home Government over 100 per cent. on the exchange,

have kept it out of Germany's hands, and would not have got

any meantime advantage, as repayment of the loan would

have been delayed until after the war. Every one was most

enthusiastic. Senior officers at Brusa were willing to support

the scheme, but the Turks wanted General Townshend's

signature. We drafted a letter from our prison asking for his

support and approval, and, if possible, to enlist the sympathies

of the Dutch Embassy where English cheques were paid only

at market rate, British officers getting about one-third to a

quarter value (exchange was 500 at the armistice). The general

frequently dined in Stamboul, and had a launch at his disposal,

so I was informed by a Turkish naval officer, who had been

with him for some time, and although no doubt considerably

watched, would have many more opportunities than

any one else.

After considerable trouble I managed to get a letter

through to the general, with a covering one to be given to him

at a dinner in Pera. The reply was long in forthcoming, and

was most disappointing.

General Townshend wrote through his A.D.C., pointing

out that the Turks weren't philanthropists, and if the scheme

had been thought practicable it would have been tried before.

Still, one must suppose the general knows best, as he dines out

frequently and sees quite an amount of Stamboul personages.

I understand from de Nari, however, that General Townshend

is more stalked than stalking. In a small photo of the

general, with his A.D.C., Mrs. Forkheimer, and a young

Austrian lady, taken on the rocks at Principo, we saw the first

of our general for years. He looked extraordinarily fit and

well. Some weeks later I passed him in Galata with an officer,

and he looked exceptionally fit then. We envied him his

opportunities, even if he were closely watched. Of one thing

I was certain, that he either did not or could not know of the

appalling sufferings and mortality of his division.

About this time I received a kind letter from Lord Islington

in reply to the letter I had sent in the water-bottle. It contained,

to my joy, the signal I had asked him to put if the

letter was ever received and dealt with, and contained also

some personal inquiries about my health. This letter landed

me in for another inquiry, which I survived all right. In fact,

I pointed out that it was known in London I had been neglected,

and so I was allowed to visit Dr. König again and extend my

visit to the baths. The German doctor was now quite angry

with the Turks. I got my bi-weekly bath at Pera, and built

up a regular visit to certain places. De Nari and I were now

well acquainted. He was a very able and strenuous worker,

and although keen on Turkish affairs, and fond of Turks even

to the point of being hand in glove with the Union and Progress

party, he was a keen and loyal Italian from all I saw of him.

Politics progressed rapidly. The second German offensive

was well under way. So successful was it that, according to

de Nari, my chance of going home on a special embassy grew

less. The Turk in victory does not do himself bare justice.

He revives instincts from his uplands in Central Asia. The

Germans would be in Paris in two weeks, and Turkey would

have back Egypt! etc., etc.

This man, de Nari, was a type to admire. An adventurer,

brave, fearless, able, far-seeing, yet with much of the gambler

in his nature, he belonged to the strain of Italy's brightest

history. I remember one day having left the posta downstairs,

and I came up by another door. De Nari's tall figure entered

the room where a piano and 'cello lay amongst his papers and

plots. He pulled his small black beard, and said with an

anxious sigh, "Eh, bien! Un jour plus!"

I noticed a revolver in his hip pocket. This man had just

been to a meeting with the chief spirits of the Union and

Progress Committee, and had had to talk around the big

heavy Telaat.

Apart from our political moves I tried to the very best of

my powers to persuade him to get d'Arici out of prison. But

d'Arici's machiavellian spirit had so many ramifications that

I think he was commonly feared by all parties. I knew him,

however, as a brave and reliable man once one understood his

code. He was still within measurable distance of death, yet

he dared to give me written information to carry outside.

This would have completed the noose, and I was fully conscious

of it when I carried the packet around. In fact, the day I

took it I had resolved that at any cost I wouldn't allow the

posta to get it.

[Illustration: GENERAL TOWNSHEND ON HIS ISLAND (PRINCIPO)

WITH VISITORS]

Great days. De Nari brought me messages from this Turk

and that. I told nothing, but waited. I felt that with a very

little the Turks could be persuaded to give in, and said I was

ready to take their suggestions and to promise to return to

captivity if nothing happened. But against all that the set

Government party wanted, or that the Union and Progress

wanted, was the solid rebellious faction without a head, some

against the Germans, some against the cost of living, some for

the old regime, some for Bouharneddin, and some for the new

party. Turkey in faith and tradition is too disciplined to be

Bolshevik. Otherwise her rebellious factions would have

united and hurled out the war cabinet in twenty-four hours.

It was on one of these factions I had stumbled through the

old Arab in the prison. Their scheme had now grown to

blowing up Bilijik Viaduct, thus stopping the German offensive

against Baghdad, a wholesale slaughter in Stamboul (d'Arici

and I resolved how in this case we would floor postas and escape

in their kit), and the opening of the Dardanelles. The police

were seething with disaffection. The garrison at the Dardanelles

had quarrelled with the Germans there, and a hundred

or so of the latter had become casualties. This was confirmed

from several sources. We began to hope for a sortie of the

Dardanelles Turkish Garrison. But the success of the German

offensive nullified this. Then came more quarrelling about the

Black Sea Russian Fleet. The Turks insisted on taking it

from the Germans. The latter had long since altered their

cry from Berlin to Baghdad into Baku-Bokhara, and here

got at loggerheads with the Turkish advertised programme.

Turkish finance was in a deplorable state. Everything pointed

to peace. But the German management that had kept Turkey

in so long was efficient beyond words. A little opening, a

little altering of the disposition of troops, and Turkey was

out. Such was the state of Stamboul in May, 1918. I went

to tea on more than one occasion at my friend Forkheimer's

home. We talked Cambridge and the phenomenon of war as

if we had been back among the cloistral stillnesses beside the

Cam. He told me frankly what state Austria was in.

In the middle of all this political welter I was suddenly

summoned to the court-martial. Arrived there one morning

with my guard, I was shown into a passage, and the first

person's head I saw among those peering around the corner

was Castell's. He was heavily guarded. The place swarmed

with sentries and spies. By making several requests in

English and French I soon found no one there understood

these languages. A little kitten had been playing in the room.

I enticed it to come and talked to it and played with it with a

piece of string. The Turks all became most interested, and

thus talking to the little kitten I informed Castell exactly as

to the stage of the case, and what was not known. I told

him that it was my opinion nothing was known of the actual

attempt, and that he must give guarded answers and evade

every question that might divulge this. Our procedure was

to avoid implicating the restaurant, who had had little or

nothing directly to do with us. This I had purposely arranged

beforehand. Also I wanted our stories to agree in evasion,

as it was useless for me to evade one question, if he

did not.

He had, it appeared, been transported to Angora, and had

been kept under the closest confinement there, until one day,

when he was informed he was to go to the war prison at

Stamboul for court-martial for assisting British officers to

escape. He was thus dreadfully in the dark, and had an idea

the whole scheme was out. The other officer had kept inside

the margin of my statement, and I intended Castell to do

the same.

While keeping strictly to the truth in any statement, I

intended to block and confuse their prosecution as much as

possible. I now ordered Castell to abandon a scheme for

hiding his identity which he had made months before. He

was from Smyrna, and very little proof of his identity seemed

forthcoming. He had intended taking the name of a British

officer who had died on the trek. This was to save his neck,

if imperilled, as he had some doubts whether, in spite of his

British nationality, the Turks would not hang him without

further ado as a Turkish subject. Much of Turkish justice

depended on the state of the German offensive, which now

seemed to have partly fizzled out. The Turks appeared to

know it was the last bolt.

I was taken into a room with even more officials present

than before. The court arose and bowed, and I saluted them.

They gave me cigarettes, and inquired of my bath. I thanked

them, and pointed out that this happened to be a bath day.

An old judge smiled amusedly, as if I had already been ordered

to be shot and tendered a petition for reprieve on account of

its being my bath day.

They took particulars, and, showing me the letter, asked

many questions at once. I informed the court, through Ali

Bey, that I would do my best not to waste these gentlemen's

time if they first allowed me to ask a question or two. After

some discussion they agreed. Pointing to the letter, I asked

if this, and this alone, was the only matter in issue, and if all

questions and answers were to be concerned with it, or did they

want to go into Gelal Bey's inquiry, and many other letters I

had written? They looked puzzled, and would not commit

themselves. However, after an hour of futile questioning

about something or other in the letter, I gave them all kinds

of contradictory statements and meetings with other persons,

and about a dozen plans of escape, as if I were keen on making

a clean breast of all my delinquencies. This they took down

letter by letter, and, of course, actually found out on cross-examining

me that these things related to other letters and

other individuals, and led us into most interesting sidelights

about our earlier letters to Bach Pacha, and Heaven knows

what, but did not advance the case in hand. At last, mopping

their brows--it was a hot day, and we had been at it over two

hours--they said very severely that the trial was only concerned

with the attempt to escape, and with the particular

letter. This eased my conscience, as it cut out the actual

attempt, and confined matters to the Black Sea affair. Except

when they grew tired (I sympathized with them), they were

quite pleasant, and my eyes pouring with water, an old colonel

examined them, and went into an account of how his eyes

had been similar once in the Caucasus. This I made lead to a

digression on the war in the Caucasus and German propaganda

there. (Germans were in hospital at Haida Pacha, with bad

eyes, had they come from there?) We got on to the French

Front, and the whole court crowded around to hear my opinion

of the situation there.... I quoted the generals from Brusa,

that they predicted an early dislocation of the German push.

We got on to politics, and, later in the afternoon, after a most

enjoyable day, marred only by the proximity of certain

questions to embarrassing ones, I had managed to explain that

the letter had been sent to Castell, c/o. the Embassy, as I

didn't know his address. I had first seen him in church holding

the plate. I didn't say where I had last seen him, which had

been in the boat. Also I managed to save Doust, who had

been a starter in the original scheme, although his name wasn't

mentioned, by not answering, saying it was not decided as to

who would go, but we had left a place for a spare passenger.

As a matter of fact, one officer had changed his mind at the

last moment. The Turks got to this point before at Psamatia,

but instead of sending for officers concerned, they sent for

Lieutenant Galloway, an officer who had given his parole, and

was sunning himself pleasantly at the parole camp at Gedos.

But as it was merely his travelling a few miles against a

chance of Doust's neck, we three in the know were inwardly

conscience easy.

The Turks congratulated me on my statement and one

called me a _shaitan_ (devil) to his colleague. I was to return

to Brusa shortly, provided I answered the most important

question. What matter? said I. Having answered so many,

what was one extra for so great a boon? In fact, if they

offered to return me to England I wouldn't mind repeating

the whole performance. They clapped me on the shoulder,

and then, amid a deathly silence, asked me to explain how it

was the rope was actually seen down the wall. (They had

evidently mixed up the occasion.) I said if they would produce

the person who saw it I would endeavour to extract the reason

from him, the wisdom of putting down a rope to escape when

the plan had not only not been delivered, but, on the

contrary, discovered.

This answer delighted the old judge, who said I was

_birinji_ (first-class), and wouldn't have me hectored further.

I have forgotten to record that early in the trial they had

admitted that Fauad, the interpreter, had played a most

villainous game, that the letter had never been to the censor,

that he had stamped it, taken it to a post-office to have a post-mark

put on it, and then, tearing it open, had reappeared with

it days later, saying it had cost him so many hundreds of

pounds, etc. I now congratulated myself on having been so

circumspective about the case, and that my opinions and

theory had been so extraordinarily correct.

A door opened, and then, after some shuffling, question

two was put to some one: "Do you know who this is?" A

screen was suddenly moved, and there I saw Castell, looking

white and scared. They had got very little out of me as to

our meetings, etc., and I had said that he was the man who

took the plate round in church, and had been unknown to me

before, and that I had been informed that he was anxious

to escape.

He looked helpless at being asked who I was, but the screen

was hardly removed, when _I_ said aloud for Castell to hear,

"Why, that's the man at the church; I didn't know him before

then." The court jumped up, and guards came over to seize me;

I hadn't been meant to speak, as they had intended asking

Castell who I was, etc. But the opportunity was too good to

be missed. Castell was much relieved at this satisfactory

announcement, showing how little the court-martial had

progressed with the escape proceedings. The old judge roared

with delight, and altogether we were quite entertained.

The proceedings had not stated what offence had been

committed, although it seemed to embrace:--

(1) My intention to escape with news, general spying, and

"undermining the fidelity of Turkish guards" (?).

(2) Castell's guilt in helping me to escape. He was

technically a civil prisoner himself.

(3) Fauad's guilt as a Turkish posta. He was wearing

uniform.

It began by my informing them these were not offences

for which an officer, who had refused his parole, could be

punished. It ended by my giving a general tirade on international

law as regards prisoners of war, and showing that

there were certain acts from which a prisoner of war could be

restrained from committing, but for which he could not legally

be punished. For instance, I might be much more useful to

my country as a prisoner propagandist, and that with a

sufficient audience of postas I might start a revolution. They

were amused at this, and asked me what, from my point of

view, would be a remedy for this? I suggested exchanging

me!

I had been asked by Gelal Bey to pay for the replacement

of two of Fauad's teeth that I had knocked out. I agreed

willingly, and now suggested that I would like him to carry

this souvenir of his treachery. The court, however, said they

would not require this, provided I did not regard him as a

Turkish soldier, although he was in uniform.

They shook hands with me. I had much cause to be

thankful that the inquiry had been so unsuccessful in finding

out more.

I now returned to prison pending trial of the others. Castell

was moved near me. This meant he was acquitted. A day

or two afterwards the state of our rooms was so unsanitary

that we feared an outbreak of fever. Castell left for hospital

with typhus, and another man died. The smell from the

drains and lavatories was overpowering. We were between

this and the stench from the prisoners in the cellars beneath

our window.

Colonel Newcombe now went sick. His skin broke out

into a fiery rash, which increased, and he felt unwell. I tried

daily for three or four days to get some one to see him, but the

commandant took no notice. At last one doctor came and

said it was merely bug-bites. By dint of perseverance we got

another Turkish doctor who ordered him to hospital, it being

actually smallpox. The colonel went off very depressed at

our dividing, as we had all sorts of plans on foot for an escape

from Brusa. He hoped, however, to get to the hospital where

his lady friends might be permitted to visit him.

D'Arici and I now got down to work. I collected a complete

compendium of news about the state of Turkey, statistics of

the army, shipping, transport, exchange, loans, and especially

inside politics. Dissensions between party and party were

increasing daily, and now that the offensive, wonderful as it

had been, was held up, the Turks on all sides were for peace.

Yet the official hold continued.

By intelligence of this nature, carefully corroborated and

up to date, I hoped to be able to render some service to our

authorities when, as I fully believed, we should come to enter

Stamboul. As yet no Turk can believe this will happen.

The others were sent to Afion. I continued on for a week

or two. D'Arici and I had made great progress with our

Intelligence. I loved to listen to his adventures and travels

and his light-hearted view of life, including as it had for him

great danger, varying discomfort, and uncertain rewards.

Yet whether on a duel or trying to raise the wind, the artist

was not far beneath, and he often treated us to selections

from grand opera. His voice was an excellent baritone of

great purity and power.

With the other officers removed, I was now more free, and

got into touch with two well-known English Levantines,

Hadkinson, father and son, who were in the next room to ours.

The former was a fine type of manhood, white-haired, and

approaching seventy-five. They had been confined for over

eighteen months as suspects in spying at Smyrna for our

fleet. Young Hadkinson, the son, was much _au fait_, and helped

me gather many facts about the course of Turkish politics

during the war, and the many factions working secretly for

the overthrow of Enver. We hatched all kinds of plots, and

finally adopted a scheme fitting in with the old Arab's, by

which a certain Turk was to be sent to Brusa to act as our

messenger to and from Stamboul (it was only six hours'

journey). Thus we could perfect our scheme. There are

parts of these schemes and plots which it may be early to

publish, but one startling proposition was for a certain powerful

faction to open the Dardanelles to our fleet by a revolution

among the Fort garrisons. It was amusing to think of me, a

prisoner, carrying answers from and to Turkish generals at

the head of many thousands of Turks in all the services, for

a conspiracy to open the Dardanelles. Nor was this so unfeasible

as it appeared. The army of the Dardanelles was

anti-Enver. It was the Union and Progress Party alone that

prevented every move. The movement wanted money, and

was going to commence with a general massacre of the

Turkish Cabinet. At this stage I left for Brusa again, the

capital where many prominent Turks even then were in

hiding!

CHAPTER XV

BRUSA AGAIN--CHANGE ON WESTERN FRONT--STAMBOUL

BEFORE THE END--POLITICAL MANOEUVRING--THE PRINCE

SUBAHEDDINE--THE UNION AND PROGRESS PARTY

Arrived I found my room next General Delamain

had been pounced upon, and I took up my quarters

with the other officers at a building known as the

American School, in a garden high up above the town. Here

some of the senior officers from other camps had arrived.

They included Colonel Lethbridge, Colonel Lodge, Colonel

Broke-Smith, who for a time had commanded the 10th Field

Artillery Brigade in Kut. He was just the same cheery good

fellow as when I had first seen him under fire, wearing a tam-o'-shanter

in his bivouac at Azizie, seated alongside his slowly

dwindling "peg." He grew more interesting as he got into

the night, and the more interesting he grew the nearer his

nose sank towards his glass resting always on the table.

About 4 a.m., towards the end of his anecdotes, his nose

generally peeped over the rim.

I was severely watched, and not allowed much freedom.

We had less restrictions in some ways, and some officers were

actually allowed to fish. Most of us took to making rods and

lines and flies. General Smith, easily the best fisherman

there, made most beautiful flies, some of which he gave me.

Major Hibbert and I shared a primitive rod I had brought

back from Stamboul. I was allowed to go fishing once by

mistake. Postas _shikared_ me so severely that I had little fishing,

but my brother officers were most sporting and kind in not

minding a little inconvenience. They, too, however, went not

to fish so much as to get a walk three miles outside the limits

tramped over for so long.

We went to see the football twice a week, and on these

occasions General Delamain and I sometimes exchanged

political notes on Europe. The third offensive had begun,

but changed immediately into a counter-offensive. I shared

a room with a Major Julius, a staff officer of considerable

reputation in India. It is significant that from some meagre

news of cavalry and artillery movement on the French front,

he calmly and deliberately prophesied that the great day had

come, and an offensive would follow. It did. In a few days

we had got Peronne, and went on and on.

Colonel Newcombe arrived two weeks after me, and now

came to my house. We worked letters to Stamboul, and I

kept privately in touch with de Nari. This was expensive, as

we paid a person's passage weekly, there and back, with a

reward. The colonel now proceeded to lose his heart to the

young lady who had nursed him in hospital.

Communication to Stamboul from Brusa remained difficult,

owing to the risk. Forkheimer had kindly written a note to

the Consul at Brusa, and through this channel I managed, once

or twice, to get communication through to de Nari about

money and news, although I did not send any intelligence

matter through this channel, as being unfair to the other side;

and in fact I promised to that effect. The Consul's daughters

were most sporting and kind. We met them, on occasion, in

the bazaar, and Greenwood, who had now turned up at Brusa,

and who had made much progress as a disciple, frequently

did sleight of hand tricks over a basket of apples in some one's

stall with one of them, thus getting a note through about

Embassy money or something. I managed to get letters

through to Forkheimer to recover for me a medical certificate

which Dr. König had formerly written me, but which had gone

astray, except one piece perfectly undecipherable.

A Committee of Prisoners' Exchange now arrived, and

we all fortified ourselves with statements of our cases. I

knew they would prevent my going for political reasons,

unless and until de Nari's schemes were ready.

More and more I saw only too clearly how all other schemes

and policies came back to the U. & P.'s programme. That

notorious party, bad as it was, remained the one strong faction

with anything like a programme or that knew what it wanted.

It retained the reins of government merely because everything

outside it was vacillating, indefinite, inarticulate; because the

policy of parties that revolved around it was either tyrannized

by intrigue or hampered by personal jealousies. And so these

parties made no progress towards translating their general

ideals into realities, but vaporized over their respective

watchwords. For instance, the Itihad or Union faction was

for bridging the artificial distinction of Young and Old Turk.

They wanted a Turkey for all Turks. Another faction, rather

a lesser circle enclosed by the last, was the Peace and Salvation

Society which was for immediate cessation of hostilities,

abandoning the scimitar for the wheels of industry and general

social development. These dreamed of the Prince Subaheddine

and wanted his recall. The Prince had had to leave Turkey

at the peril of his life, and after doing useful work for

us in Greece went to Switzerland. He seems an idealist of

good intentions, and with a love of his country, but, unless

under the shelter of our guns, to lack both the vigour, nerve

and determination necessary to cope with such as Enver a soldier

of fortune, Telaat a promoted telegraph clerk, Djemal a throwback

to the primitive Tartar, all enjoying a snatched executive

authority at the point of a revolver. There had been with me

in the prison in Stamboul a Turkish major brought up for

appropriating goods. From him I learned something of the

appalling nature of the corruption in Turkey. Take Giahid

Bey, for example, who was appointed to stop profiteering. He

merely steered profits into his own pocket and that of Enver

& Co. I heard from a first-hand source that on the second

sack of Erzerum, property worth three million liras was

divided between the triumvirate and remains invested in

various countries against an international finance débacle

later on.

Take Jemal, the Governor of Stamboul (Commandant de la

Place), formerly Enver's A.D.C., a man in whose hands rested

the lives of practically all the political prisoners of Turkey.

Not one spark of justice remains to such. Not only had he

to fulfil the mandates of the triumvirate, but, outside that, he

utilized every opportunity for his own advancement. That

is possible in Stamboul probably more than anywhere in

Europe, not even excepting Russia. To seek advancement at

the expense of the public weal and justice, it is only necessary

to enter the arena of intrigue boldly, and, armed with the

possession of as many facts as possible of other intrigues, by

a general compromise of blackmail, to retain this advancement.

Added to which there is the difficulty of foreign policy, left as

a most tangled legacy of personal intrigue by Abdul Hamid.

The problem of Russia, Turkey's external fear both for Constantinople

and her eastern flank, of the Balkans with their

vulture propensities awaiting the fall of Turkey, and the

necessity of Turkey having at least one friend in Europe,

are a sufficient handful without the increased embarrassment

she gets from internal questions like that of the Armenians

and the Arabs. And over all these problems, without and

within, mined like high explosives around every important

structure of the State, there is usually flung the shadow of

some daring ambassador presiding by intrigue and threat of

application of the match. Wangenheim was such a one.

One heard it said on every hand that our ambassadorial

representation before the war was so weak that it flung Turkey

into the arms of Germany. There must be some truth in this

from the universality of its utterance, and yet imagine to what

state a country, as seething with intrigue and corruption as is

Turkey, must be reduced by being bombarded with the courtship

of the leading Powers?

The third German offensive now became our offensive, and

once more the tide of battle ended in our favour. Once more

on the French front we redug our trenches among the earlier

dead. We seemed still far from getting back to England.

The exchange that should have happened two years before

has been held up partly by the instigation of Germany, and

partly by the weakness of our own delegates on the Prisoner

of War Committee in Switzerland, two or three years before.

Eighteen months after Turkish prisoners in Egypt had got

their treatment agreed upon, we were left _in statu quo_, and

when we saw for the first time the regulations to which both

England and Turkey were bound, there were outbursts of

indignation on every hand. If our representatives on the

Prisoner of War Committee had included some efficient

soldier, who had known, by practical dealings, the methods and

delays and subterfuges of the Turks, we would have had some

safeguards, and it would not have been possible to keep

British officers in underground typhus cells for nine months,

awaiting trial for an offence of escaping, the penalty of which

was only two weeks, and the inspection of camps would

not have been a farce. For instance, a list was allowed to be

presented by the Turks saying all camps had no complaints,

when we had not even been visited up to date (July, 1918).

At times I have imagined that the lot of imprisonment,

such as ours, must have a purifying influence and help one to

see beneath the surface of the passing show into the deeper,

eternal currents that flow along translucently below.

Sometimes, if rarely, I had managed to entice my posta

above Brusa town and from a hill beheld the rising beauty of

Olympus. Going to my bath on one occasion in the hot

month of August, I was too tired and seedy to get there in

time, and so, sitting down by the roadside where the more

fortunate were allowed to walk daily, I wrote these lines--

SONNET

CAPTIVITY

One day I sought a tree beside the road

Sad, dusty road, well known of captive feet--

My mind obedient but my heart with heat

Rebelled pulsating 'gainst the captor's goad.

So my tired eyes closed on the 'foreign field'

That reached around me to the starlight's verge,

One brief respite from weary years to urge

Me to forget--and see some good concealed.

But skyward then scarred deep with ages long

I saw Olympus and his shoulders strong

Rise o'er the patterned destinies of all the years

Marked with God's finger by the will of Heaven--

Tracks men shall tread, with only Time for leaven--

That we might see with eyes keen after tears.

_Brusa, July 16th, 1918._

But these moments were few, and the pressure of existence

and shikar for food and money, and general bandobast of

plots and plans and pots and pans engrossed much attention.

The Austrian Consul's house I visited for a few seconds through

the posta confusing it with the council offices. I usually

arranged not to go to the house, but after I had built up a

system Colonel Newcombe over used it. His young lady

friend, who had nursed him in Stamboul, came on a visit to

Brusa, and rendezvoused him once too often here. They

confused him with me and I got punishment for both. This

left Colonel Newcombe free still to carry on our plans, although

he was very averse to letting me pay his penalty. Any other

proceeding was, of course, futile for both of us.

We had several plans, all of which failed. Then we

decided to get back to Stamboul once again. So changed was

the political outlook for Turkey that escape from there was now

much easier, and to live in hiding was possible. He arranged

to get there by the help of this young lady.

The exchange selections of officers were made and remade,

and finally all kinds of people were put down including one

colonel who was hard of hearing, which he described as

gun deafness. He managed to be deaf while his examination

was on, but forgot not to hear when they said

he was to go. We all did this more or less. However, I

realized the board was all a hoax and insisted on going back

to Stamboul for treatment to my spine, as there was no

specialist in Brusa. By dint of great persistence I managed

this. An interpreter, Zia Effendi, from the American College,

Smyrna, I found deeply versed in politics, and although he

was not reliable, was undoubtedly in touch with some movements

and was useful to a degree.

It was now August, 1918. The faster the Germans went

back, the more the German alliance was criticized and the

Government openly attacked. A financial panic occurred in

Stamboul. Jealousies raged over the Doubrouja, half of

which Germany gave to Bulgaria leaving the rest in abeyance.

And Turkey wanted the Maritza even if Bulgaria had the half

of the Doubrouja. Germany used this fact as a bribe. Then

trouble commenced over Batum. Germany, in seizing Odessa,

indicated her independence of Turkey on her way to the East.

Popular feeling, that had only wanted a leading motive, now

became articulate over this. Feeling ran high. Telaat went

to Berlin, collecting souvenirs and welcomes from Bulgaria

and Austria _en route_. There, as had been expected, Turkish

claims were admitted after a theatrical tussle put up by Germany,

on the condition that Turkey remained in the war.

In the meantime Bulgaria began to plot to be the first

rat from the sinking ship. The first rat has the best chance.

Meanwhile Newcombe's plan to escape to Stamboul was

difficult owing to the extra posta in the garden. This was due

to the Consular affair. He disguised himself as an Arab, and,

except that he walked as if in Regent Street, did not make a

bad one. The plans he left largely to me. On my suggestion

he kept to his bed for some days beforehand on pretence of

being ill. Then, on the night, I rushed down to one posta and

sent him off with a letter to the commandant. The other was

suspicious, but after some scene I managed to cajole this

fellow, Abdul Khadir by name, whom we all detested, and

made my peace with him. Sincere acting was necessary as

we heard the cracks of a tile, and I knew Newcombe would be

caught if Abdul went another yard. I shook him by both

hands and prevented him from going, telling him that now I

had forgiven him. This was true. The man was a sneak in

many ways and I took delight in thinking how I was enabling

Newcombe to get away even as we spoke, and that it was this

posta of all who should be on guard. Then Greenwood and I

decoyed with several drinks of mastik, the curious people,

including a colonel, who wanted to see Newcombe. I lay in

Colonel Newcombe's bed at night. The next day I told the

old Turkish officer in charge of the place that Newcombe did

not want to see any one, which was probably true. (He was

by this time well on his way to Stamboul.) I then got into

his bed knowing the Turk, being suspicious, would come.

Greenwood made me look like Newcombe's figure. Meals,

half-eaten, lay by the bedside. I had eaten them so as not

to let even the orderlies know. I heard the door open and the

Turk peep in. A few groans sent him out again.

The next night we had much to do with keeping abreast

of the general curiosity. But it was essential to give him a

good start. Then, the following morning, I took in to Colonel

Lethbridge, our C.O., a letter of explanation that Colonel

Newcombe had left with me for the purpose.

Of all people it was I who was delegated to tell the Turk.

In as many words I merely said the Colonel had fled. The old

Turk screamed with rage and terror, seized his sword, put on

his fez and jacket, and, forgetting his trousers, rushed outside

screaming to his postas and looking under every bush.

This continued at intervals all day. We all were locked

up, but this only lasted a day or two. A few days later I got

permission to go to Haida Pasha Hospital in Constantinople,

and heard privately that Newcombe had arrived in Stamboul,

and was in hiding through the assistance of his lady friend.

Meeting General Delamain on the football ground, I said that

I believed this was my _Heimkehr_, or in other words, that in

any case hostilities were near an end. He thought so too. I

listened to him on the military situation in France and Bulgaria

and we discussed the emergence of new political formations

in Europe, the new distribution of the balance of power

necessitated by the hiatus of Russia, of the Balkans, possibly

of Austria.

We talked of the tendency of small movements to merge

into large, of the awakening of similar thought in all men, of

chaos revolving around chaos that could not become cosmos

before the centre of political gravity were ascertained, and

equilibrium adjusted once more. Looking back on captivity

one felt that the change in one had become spiritual even more

than physical. The pattern of destiny stood out very plainly

for us all.

We said "Good-bye," and that night my brother officers

gave me an awfully good send off, and Colonel Broke-Smith

produced an extra bottle of mastik. I had a long talk with

our senior officer, Colonel Lethbridge of the Oxfords, whose

quiet, restful attitude was still undisturbed. I left before the

dawn in an arabana, some of my friends coming to the wagon.

I felt certain this was the last occasion of my departing from

Brusa.

Except for one old Jew and a very pretty daughter on

board the boat, the voyage was without incident. She sat by

me, and after waiting an hour I managed to put a letter into

her pocket when the posta turned away. She was to deliver

it to Colonel Newcombe. Much depended on this.

We arrived at Galata Bridge, and this time, different from

the last, excited crowds were reading news of the victorious

arms of the Entente. _Le Journal d'Orient_ spoke out plainly

and bitterly against Germany, and was for a separate peace

at once. Everything had changed.

I was hustled to Haida Pasha Hospital and went through

the same performance as of old, having my clothes taken from

me with all my kit and food I had brought with me, and

spending the first night in a bathroom. The noise was

maddening and I could not sleep.

The whole hospital talked of one, Jones, an officer of the

Volunteer Battery whose guns I had brought back from the

front line in Kut, at night, on a momentous occasion. I had

heard before that he had pretended he was mad so enthusiastically,

that he had gone mad in fact. He was now here

hating Englishmen hard, and in fact it was dangerous for him

to meet them. Most of the Turks said he was mad. I woke

after a troubled sleep to the startling announcement by a

Turk, from an adjoining bed, that during my sleep Jones had

been standing over me silently for a long time. The repetition

of this got on my nerves. He wouldn't sleep in the same room

with an Englishman, so I moved to a large ward, where I was

quite alone.

In the middle of the night I saw a ghoulish figure, wearing a

large, black mantle and with stark, staring eyes, stalking me

from bed to bed. With all the uncanny anticipation of one's

every movement that usually happens only in a nightmare

he divined my every move, for I also tried to get to the door.

Then I started to talk German. At this an attendant came

for him. I breathed freely as he left. I thought what a pity

it was after all my experiences to meet my end from a mad

fellow-prisoner. After this he fled on seeing me, although I

kept up the German identity. Then I got a note written to

me from him, a veritable mad document assuring me he

hated the English and that he feared I was going to kill him.

This arrived just after I had met him in daylight. He wore a

black overall, a yard of which he had picked into threads,

which his busy fingers did incessantly. His hair was long, he

wore a beard, and his white, sunken cheeks gave him a ghastly

appearance.

I had wished him a polite "Good evening" in Turkish, and

then the note had arrived. I replied to it in German, and he

replied again that he didn't know German, and if I didn't

promise not to kill him he would kill himself. We met alone,

and, in an extraordinary way, with some postas looking on, I

discovered Jones to be quite sane.

It is a wonderful story. I refer only casually to it here.

From this moment we acted consistently when together, he

pretending he hated all of us except me, and at periods even

me, if postas were difficult. He had had a most lonely time

for months. The strain had been awful. He had heard of

my adventures and regretted, he said, that we had not been

together in a camp to try some escape. He told me of his

long story, commencing with spiritualistic séances at Yozgad,

which the commandant attended, and how he had almost

persuaded the commandant to take him to the Black Sea in

search of treasure, the whereabouts the spook had revealed to

Jones. The fate of the Turk before the treasure was found

seemed to have promised to be a watery grave or bondage.

That fizzled out, and then he and another subaltern named

Hill, also pretending he was mad, acted with such persistence

that they were finally sent for medical treatment to Stamboul.

On the way they were spied on and Jones, besides pulling out

all his teeth, had, with Hill, pretended to hang himself, kicking

off from a table as they heard the guard entering. This, he

explained, was necessary to convince the Turk. They had

arrived in Stamboul a few months before. On the preceding

Monday Hill had left on exchange and Jones, who had had

to act he didn't want to go to England as he was a Turk, had

either overdone it or else one or two Turkish doctors believed

him more or less sane. There can be little doubt that more

than one medical officer and possibly the commandant of the

hospital, saw through Jones' pretence, excellent as it was.

Some Turk suggested to me, with a most confiding smile, that

Jones, in pretending for so long he was mad, was actually

going mad, and by the armistice would be so mad then that

he would have to be exchanged!! The _Chef d'Hôpital_, a

very decent fellow, discussed Jones at great length with me.

Jones, he said, would not return because he feared a court-martial,

as one mule had had a grudge against him for getting

his guns in a mess at Kut, and that as I had rescued him I was

the only Englishman Jones would tolerate. The commandant

was quite baffled about the mule, which, on inquiry, turned

out to be Colonel Maule. On the plea that I was also down

for exchange, in fact had passed both examinations for this

in the hospital, and that I believed I could get Jones along

with me if I said I would defend him and get him off at the

court martial, the commandant asked permission from headquarters

for us to go. Jones continued to make himself so

troublesome through the whole hospital, knocking people into

wells and doing and undoing jobs, that they allowed us

together on the plea that we were to concoct a defence. Jones

had already purposely written about twenty volumes of

rubbish on this. He was a daring actor but not quite finished,

and more than once I thought just overdid it before the

commandant. Once alone over our law books, with a huge

kettle of tea and some food from parcels that now were

arriving, we talked of our plans and of his great loneliness for

months. I knew more than he did of local politics, but he was

very useful and altogether a first-rate companion.

Mademoiselle X, Colonel Newcombe's friend, now visited

me in hospital with another lady who had been kind on

occasion. She showed me her engagement ring, and told me

how the Colonel had turned up with a basket of fish after

getting across the Marmora in a fishing boat, and had gone

into hiding there. He seems to have had a sporting time of

it and displayed considerable daring. I had posted him pretty

well up to date with news for de Nari, and I now heard he had

more or less supplanted me as to going home, owing to my

disinclination to support any party programme of Turks or

any one else.

The next day I got out to Pera for my baths. To accomplish

this takes hours of patient waiting for a chance to remind

the commandant, and heavy bribery inside the hospital. I

found that the city was seething with intrigue, that I was

watched, that Enver and Telaat were preparing to flee, that

Rahmi Bey, a clever but notorious Albanian at Smyrna, was

trying to commence _pourparlers_. General Townshend who

had, so the papers said, become Turcophile, and had frequently

acknowledged his good treatment by the Turks, was now

rumoured to be enthusiastic to go out with the terms of peace.

His agent, the lady who had visited me in hospital, had now

got more or less in touch with de Nari, _i.e._ my line of communications.

I was sorry so many things did not seem understood

by well-meaning senior officers in captivity. After some

hours with my friend de Nari, the posta being outside, and

reading between the lines, it appeared that certain parties were

stalking Enver and Telaat, who now resigned. That these

parties were stalked by General Townshend, and he, in turn, was

stalked by de Nari representing the U. and P. and Italy.

Some one was required to stalk him.

The U. and P. were most immensely unpopular. Marshal

Izzet Pasha, a soldier of standing, became Grand Vizier after

Tewfiq Pasha, the friend of England and ambassador in

London before the war, had refused. But while the U. and P.

was supposed to be definitely ousted from the war cabinet

that has brought and kept Turkey in the war, I found that

their elaborate spy system had definitely obscured the political

identity of certain politicians until then. These, wearing no

outward badge but secretly U. and P., now had a preponderance

in the cabinet, although not a heavy one. The _Journal

d'Orient_ (run by Carossa, the millionaire) and the _Ak Sham_

spoke out strongly for peace.

We were now on the Somme and the Bulgarians were

being hammered back. The dying cries of the _Osmanisher

Lloyd_, a blatant Prussian paper that had crowed over Stamboul

all the war, were very humorous.

I went into town day after day. Regulations were relaxed,

and although I had a posta, I was more free. The universal

ruin that threatened seemed to invite every one to make a

little backsheesh first. Day after day I saw Forkheimer, who

was as kind and sporting as ever. He seemed to have no idea

of the extent of the calamity that must threaten his country

and Germany if, as it seemed, this was the end. He was

disgusted at the state of Turkish policy and put me _au courant_

with much news that helped me and could not damage them.

They had seen a lot.

It is now October 20th. Exchange is panicking, politics

in a frightful tangle. The exchange of prisoners is hung up.

Marshal d'Esperey, with British and French forces, is still

thrashing the Bulgarians, who are reported likely to make

peace at any moment. Other political parties here want to

forestall them. Zia Bey, the interpreter from Brusa, has

helped me to get in touch with the Prince Subaheddine's party,

whose chief virtue is that it is opposing political profiteers.

_October 21st._--I have seen Newcombe with his _fiancée_, and

de Nari in the Petit Champs in Pera. The colonel came out

of hiding and walks about free. I have seen a note in the

_Journal d'Orient_ describing him as a Turcophile (at which he

would be most annoyed) and saying that he had escaped to

Stamboul from Brusa, and would follow General Townshend

on a political mission. I now saw de Nari every day and

realized one thing very surely, viz. that he stood to represent

the interests of the U. and P. and particularly Italy. I saw

most of his private communications from Shefkut Pasha and

Midhat Chukri Bey (the able secretary of the U. and P.). He

was more than ever concerned lest the _pourparlers_ should get

out of his hand. He engaged the ear of the U. and P. in the

cabinet, yet as an Entente subject resident in Turkey during

the war, his path was more or less difficult. It seemed

to me he was sending Colonel Newcombe with his, de Nari's,

wishes, put as representing the Turkish Cabinet. He was

largely interested in Adalia, the Italian settlement, and wanted

at all costs to get that for Italy. We crossed swords in a

friendly way over methods, and he realized I wouldn't carry

his representation, which seemed to me unofficial and unauthorized.

Nevertheless, Colonel Newcombe has an excellent

understanding of the position here, and he does know what

few British officers know, what is in the mind of the Turks.

Turkey is outflanked. The Chatalja lines that held up the

Bulgarian forces are useless against the concentration of

modern artillery fire, and most Turks realize this. I knew

from d'Arici who was there on the occasion of that battle, how

easily the Bulgarians could have entered behind a heavy

moving barrage.

_October 23rd._--Townshend left a few days ago for Smyrna.

De Nari assured me the public wanted to know what chance

his terms had, and questioned me about the possibility of my

taking other terms through after Newcombe had left on his

errand. I pointed out for his sense of humour that in this way

the whole remnant of the prisoners might ultimately get out

of Turkey. He was a delightful man, and, with all his arduous

schemings, had a large margin for laughter. I informed him

that I had no desire to take through his suggestions without

adding my own notes. I had now got in touch with the

Prince Subaheddine's Party. They were sending a delegate

to the fleet to try and get permission to send him to Switzerland

for the Prince. I assured them that all their influential

following would avail them nothing, but that on one condition

I would get his embassy put before the fleet, and possibly

take their delegate to London. Also that I was the only one

who could do it. The delegate was to meet me in Smyrna in

case I left first for there, which I expected to do any day with

Jones.

My condition was that complete intelligence on all matters

financial, economical, political, naval and military be collected

on the heads I gave them. The English governess of the Prince's

daughter, Fatteh, unfortunately, I did not meet through

posta difficulties. De Nari knew I was in touch, and

hurried Colonel Newcombe off. I tried to put the latter

_au courant_, but he was too much elated at his embassy to

think of what it contained, and, after all, as he said, de Nari's

party was a very real one, and a factor to be reckoned with.

_October 26th._--I have omitted to note an excellent air-raid

over Stamboul, the second of two attacks in the same week.

About 2 p.m. from the hospital I heard the sound of explosions

in Stamboul. People were running on all sides to get a good

view of the attack, and the Turkish officers of the hospital,

many of whom had not seen a shot fired during the war,

rushed down below to their basement floors. They came on,

a flight of seven very fast machines, and were met by a steady

barrage, which began at San Stephano, and continued across

Stamboul.

Their bombing could be located by the white bursts. To

my delight they seemed quite close to the Ministry of War.

As they swept towards Pera, they bombed Galata Bridge,

and the German Embassy. The sky was thick with artillery

bursts, but the machines were very fast. As they circled

around, keeping a beautiful line, and came towards Haida

Pasha, heavy German guns opened on them vigorously. This

hospital, the largest in Turkey, has a big white crescent

painted on the roof, but as German artillery was close by, a

mitrailleuse alongside in the Crimean Veterans' garden, and

the Haida Pasha Station yard about two hundred yards off

our boundary, we saw quite an amount of bombing. The

hospital was spared, but a bomb got the barracks close by.

The Turks in the hospital pointed with pride to a Turkish

aeroplane which got up to attack our planes. It was a

glorious opportunity for a spectacular event such as the Turks

love.

Above the silver sea there appeared seven shivering planes,

flying in formation like sand-grouse across a blue sky dotted

by the white puffs of artillery fire. As the Turk arose the

fire ceased. Two of our fellows detached themselves to beat

him off. He came down wounded a few moments later.

A good deal of propaganda has been dropped, showing

the precise position of the Entente and Allied Armies. From

all reports the bombing was not good. They got very few

soldiers. One colonel was killed. But as Stamboul is

heavily armed and protected, according to the development

in practice of modern war it seems justifiable.

The moral effect was the most wonderful imaginable. The

_Chef d'Hôpital_ asked our advice. For the first time in its

history the sacred city of Stamboul, sheltering with all its

intrigue behind the locked gates of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles,

is no longer inviolate, but assailable from the skies.

It is ten thousand pities we did not resort to this a year before.

When one realizes how slender was the official hold that kept

Turkey in the war over many crises, how indifferent provincial

Turkey was about entering, and how averse to continuing

for the sake of Germany, one can realize how air propaganda

and attacks would have brought before them the meaning of

this war.

I pointed out that they had to thank the Germans for the

bombing, firstly, in that she had commenced to break the

rules of war, and secondly, that she was their ally. To bomb

Germany it was necessary to risk hitting the Turks. The

Germans--not the Turks--had used this warfare from the

first. This I circulated to the Press, and it reached a good

many channels, besides some prominent members of Parliament.

The passions of the Turks came uppermost. The

next morning I was in Pera. Many Germans had been

assaulted, and more than one Turkish woman had flourished

her knife at German officers.

I saw instances of sharp expression of feeling myself. The

planes came again, dropping propaganda this time, and not

bombing. The propaganda notified that German armies

are surrendering wholesale, and we have more than reached

the original point whence the great German offensive started,

and are still thrusting them back; that Bulgarian armies are

broken, and communication between Germany and Turkey

cut; and that, unless all Germans have orders to move out

of Stamboul at once, bombing will continue. I had ascertained

the extreme importance and likelihood of advantage

in this propaganda, and had asked a captured R.A.F. officer

with me in prison months before to get it through at once.

He had a code, and the first letters of new prisoners were now

expedited. He sent it. This time public rage and dissatisfaction

was more intensified than ever, and the Press was

outspoken.

General Townshend's offers of mediator, as advertised by

certain political parties, no one takes seriously who is

acquainted with the political manoeuvring of Turkish parties

for position. They are prepared to use his "good graces," as

they put it, just so far and no more as he can recommend

leniency for them, or rather, give to the fortunate parties,

successful in manoeuvring for the privilege of commencing

_pourparlers_, the chance of having first word.

Moreover, the Turks refer in the Press to their excellent

treatment of the General as giving them a sort of right to

expect his "good graces." One is tempted to ask, like the

soldier in _L'Aiglon_, what about the rank and file?

It is the Entente thrust towards Nish, the rumour that

we have flying columns near Lala Burgas, and that, failing

a surrender, a landing will be made at Dedogatch, that is

making up the Turkish mind. It is the collapse of Germany

on the western front, the decision in the main theatre of war,

that has crumpled up Turkey. In other words, there can

be no mediation here any more than there was when Kut

fell.

_October 31st._--I have been too busy to write my notes.

Jones and I have worked very hard for hours a day with an

inexhaustible patience to try to prove his insanity. It is

now admitted that he is insane and believes he is to go home

to be court-martialled for some offence, and I am to take him

away on the pretext of defending him. It would take many

hundreds of pages to write down the history of these four

weeks. I have the offer of living freely with de Nari, but I

do not care to accept a semi-freedom. Nor do I want to stay

here until the fleet enters, as it must. I want to get down to

Smyrna. By then, if the delegate from the Prince's party

arrives, I can take him to the fleet, or otherwise go alone.

I became acquainted the other day with de Nari's terms and

suggestions carried by Newcombe, who is to have direct

communication with Turkey, but only through de Nari by a

code. I have a letter from de Nari to Newcombe, saying I

am also to use the code and to have access to his channel of

communication, if necessary. After Colonel Newcombe had

gone, de Nari's scheme did not appear to him so rosy, and he

realized how the situation was getting out of his hand.

The Germans have been pouring into Stamboul from

Anatolia and Syria. I have heard of their stand alone against

Allenby's forces when the Turks were demoralized and the

Arabs attacked them as anti-Islam.

Conflicts are frequent between the Germans and Turks in

Stamboul. The German troops are ransacking the houses,

and removing everything, from locks, windows and telephones,

to motor-cars and vehicles. They move about in bodies. A

number of German privates besieged by some Turks near here,

put up an excellent defence, fought their way to a ship, captured

her, and steamed out to the Black Sea.

We were to have left to-day, but final receipts and passports

were overlooked until the last moment, and Jones' was

a difficult case. I wouldn't go without him. He thanked

me again and again, and assured me, "Mousley, but for you

I should be left here possibly weeks after the fleet enters."

Everything is excitement and disorder. Centuries of captivity

are falling from me every second. I am outwardly

calm, and too busy to psychologize much on the great end of

this awful eternity. This may be because I am busy. But

in odd moments I realize that vision in Mosul, seemingly so

many millions of years ago, was true, and that given enough

patience, the stream of Time must carry us away past even

the most terrible moment.

CHAPTER XVI

I LEAVE STAMBOUL ON A MISSION EN ROUTE FOR THE FLEET--MEET

THE PRINCE'S DELEGATE AT SMYRNA--FREE!--WITH

THE ENTENTE FLEET AT MUDROS BEFORE ENTERING THE

DARDANELLES

_Smyrna, November 4th._--Thank God! After colossal

trouble and planning to bring Jones along, we were

allowed to go on the evening of November 3rd, having

been delayed just enough to miss the boat of several days

earlier--I believe purposely.

Exquisite joy and suspense of that last night! I had

seen Gelal Bey recently in Stamboul, and he spoke kindly to

me. It brought my terrible Psamatia days back, and I fled.

Jones and I arrived at the quay by Galata Bridge in the afternoon

with a guard. I got leave to take farewell of de Nari.

Before the boat left I was overjoyed to see aboard d'Arici, who

had been freed a few days before, and had sought me everywhere.

With all his delightful light-heartedness he expressed

his profound gratitude for the services I had done him. He

gave me advice, very useful, about Rahmi Bey, the prominent

ex-Governor of Smyrna, to whom I had a letter from de Nari,

and who was leaving by the same boat. A sharp and polished

Oriental, he appeared to me, but well equipped with cunning

and Eastern dalliance. Ali Bey, who had been sympathetic

at my court-martial, was there also to say farewell, and bid

me back to Stamboul as soon as possible. We all drank

German beer obtained in the saloon at a lira a bottle.

I met Hadkinson the son, of prison memories, having heard

much news about his plans from d'Arici. He was also

travelling to Smyrna. I procured for Jones and myself a

tiny double-berth cabin, where he was permitted to cease

playing he was mad, poor fellow! and we had a glorious meal

of tinned meats, and cake and tea.

We saw the last of Stamboul from the deck after our

affectionate farewells were over, when we had got under way.

As the blanket of Night wrapped Stamboul from our view, we

saw disappear first the outlines of the great mosques, and then

the minarets. It was still too close to watch.... We adjourned

to our cabin with a pipe each and a brandy, luxury of luxuries!

Jones and I sat side by side on the bunk, listening to the

splash of waves outside the porthole. We went on deck. Far

away in our wake a few lights flickered upon the waves. It

was Stamboul: the City of the Eternities, the Beautiful, the

Terrible.

Jones was a philosopher. We were silent, or swore beneath

our breath.

I left him to see Rahmi, who had sent me a message. We

had a long conversation in French. For some reason he did

not want to talk English. He believed Turkey would do best

if given great chances. He admitted they were finished. All

depended on England. He would assist me in getting away

if he could.

Hadkinson and I then made some plans. He was a man of

forty, had lived in Smyrna all his life, would also help me to

get away, and, in fact, contribute himself to the information

I had. He had also got in touch with Satvet Lutfi, the friend

and confidential adviser of the Prince Subaheddine, the patron

of the Peace and Salvation Society, who was to leave Stamboul

in two days' time, and had not already left, as I had heard.

We planned deep into the night, then Jones and I slept.

We awoke lying alongside the jetty among the rocky hills

of Panderma. I took Jones on to a train for which we waited

an hour or two. He still acted all he could that he was mad,

and would, until he got on board, so he said. We got into a

crowded carriage, and after a journey lasting all day, reached

Smyrna the next morning without mishap from bandits,

who had been stopping many trains and holding prominent

citizens to ransom. The country was uncultivated, and had

been left to run wild. The people remaining were Turks and

Greeks. At Smyrna the Dutch Consulate assisted and gave

us money. One batch of prisoners had left that morning,

and another would leave in two or three days.

Jones and I found apartments along the bay where General

Melliss had been. The generals had come straight from Brusa

here, and some already had departed. I had got the local

operator to repair the wireless station that had been closed

down for years. We got into touch with one Commander

Heathcote-Smith, formerly Consul at Smyrna, now at Mytilene,

and through him we got into communication with the fleet

at Mudros. For permission to use this wireless I found de

Nari's letter very useful. Mr. Whitall offered me a launch,

which, however, would have meant getting to Mytilene, and

no further.

The moments of waiting for the reply to our wireless were

exquisite. At last, in direct touch with the outside world!

Newcombe had been hung up for days here, and had left a

few hours only before we arrived. Our wireless answer said

that a gunboat was to arrive, and I would then be enabled

to get in touch with naval circles direct. That day, Hadkinson

invited us out to his father's suburban villa perched high on

a hill overlooking a wonderful harbour. One or two officers

were here I had known in Kut. They had found their way

to Smyrna unassisted in the general chaos.

That afternoon the Monitor 29 entered Smyrna. The once

familiar grey of England's Navy--for us a very strange sight

indeed--filled us with feelings indescribable. Her two 6-inch

guns were elevated. She was spick and span. As the blue

uniforms appeared we beheld our first sight as free men. We

went on board for a moment. I learned that the captain had

very strict instructions that no one was to leave Smyrna

without orders. He was there to stand by. He would go to

the vacant British Consulate.

I returned at a more leisurely moment, hours later, and

in the wardroom had my first respectable whisky. The

officers were inordinately kind to all of us, told us news for the

twentieth time, and gave us of their best. One of them, a

Mr. Underwood, I found knew some friends of mine. He came

to dine with Jones and me in the town.

That night a telegram reached us from Constantinople that

Satvet Lutfi Bey--the personal friend and secretary of the

Prince Subaheddine before the war, during most of which he

had been in various prisons, and now hoped to rejoin the

Prince and to bring him back as the light of Turkey--would

arrive at dawn. Satvet had collected first-rate matters of

intelligence from the actual sources, and owing to the

duplicity of the police, had got first-hand information of all

descriptions.

Before the dawn Hadkinson and I went together to see

Lutfi. Our postas we had now shaken off for good. We

refused to recognize them. Satvet was a well-bred, well-dressed

Turk. His quietness and pale face impressed me.

He was a serious and earnest man. We took him along

to the Military Governor, who turned out to be Nureddin

Pasha, the general who had unsuccessfully tried to take

Kut early in the siege. He was delighted to meet me,

and delayed a whole queue of Turks and Greeks who were

waiting to see him while he described to me what happened

on December 25th, 1915. I got his permission to leave the

harbour with Satvet. Armed with this I saw Commander

Dixon of the Monitor 29 at the Consulate. Dixon was a

typical naval officer, physically and mentally robust. He

literally pulled me to pieces and my intentions, or as much as

he could get out of me, and finally allowed me to send some

wireless messages to Mudros, and, if satisfactory replies were

forthcoming, to send us there himself. He came to tea with

us that night, and told us the reply had come, and that it

was fixed that we should leave at dawn in a captured Turkish

gunboat manned by officers and crew off the M. 29.

Commander Dixon was a most entertaining and entertainable

person. He was delighted to get away from Mudros,

which he described as "Fleet, fleet, fleet, with bare hills all

around." I was very elated as this was my last night in

Turkey. We crowded around the piano and sang glees and

songs. I drove back with Dixon to the Consulate to get some

directions. As we went along, the town stood at attention,

so great was the prestige of the fleet even through this diminutive

representative, the monitor.

The scene when the M. 29 entered was one of the greatest

enthusiasm imaginable. Crowds jammed the quays and waited

there hours. All around the ship the sea was black with boats

loaded with people anxious for a glimpse. The Greeks, however,

seized the opportunity of getting their own back on the

Turk, and made attacks largely unprovoked. They hoisted

huge Greek flags over many public buildings, including the

hotel where Commander Dixon was staying. This led to

blows, and it looked like a general riot.

[Illustration: THE FIRST WARSHIP IN TURKISH WATERS. H.M.S. MONITOR 29,

WHICH DESPATCHED PRINCE'S DELEGATE WITH AUTHOR TO THE FLEET]

Dixon, however, with commendable promptness, had a

manifesto printed in about six languages, and posted up by

daybreak, warning any one against making any demonstrations

whatever.

That night Jones assumed partial sanity among some

British officers. This was necessary, as some recent prisoners

seemed in a hurry to supplant those of long standing. I had

tried to take him with me, but this was not permitted. But it

was agreed at the Consulate he was to go with the first batch.

On this condition I felt my convoy of him was at an end,

especially as I was travelling on duty. We had a cheerful

last evening, and on our way to the town met some of the

officers we had known in Kut, separated from us by years of

captivity. Major Harvey, our adjutant, was among them.

Prisoners now began to flock into the town every hour. I

was under orders of secrecy, and managed to slip away quietly

with Satvet Lutfi. A party of prominent Turkish supporters

with him, Hadkinson and I, all lunched together.

Further delay was necessary, as the heavily-mined harbour

had been only partially swept, and a few mines had got loose.

We waited on the gunboat till about 4 p.m. Commander

Dixon came and wished us good luck, and that I might be found

useful to the Staff at Mudros. A brisk and simple good-bye,

and we got on board. The officer accompanying us saluted

his commander, the engines started, a rope fell, we were under

way. I gazed with the intoxication of a mysterious ecstasy

at the widening strip of green water between us and the quay,

where, in white uniforms, Commander Dixon and his officers

and one or two officials of Smyrna waved us good-bye.

* * * * *

The Lieut.-Commander clapped me on the back and asked

me to have a drink as a free man on board a British ship. I

drank deep and prayerfully!

Later, we went on deck. It was a wintry evening, but the

sky was very clear and the harbour magnificent. We followed

the golden path westward towards the setting sun. Here and

there we saw some sunken ships that had been mined, and

others that had been used to block the channels. A small

detail was the discovery by our skipper that this old Turkish

gunboat had been wrongly described. We drew eight feet

instead of six, and mines lay at nine!

Who cared? One would have been free! And that drink!

Satvet Lutfi, immersed in gloom, sat in a heap in the tiny

cabin eyeing the coast. I spoke to him. He replied to me

very sadly. Pointing to the sunset, he said the sun was setting

on Turkey, and he believed one hope only remained. That

was his Prince. From politics we passed to his experiences.

He located, far away to the south-west, an old stone prison

quite alone on the rocks. There he had been a prisoner for

years before the war and years during the war.

He told me how he had been intended to die there. They

had no water, only a central pool in a dungeon collected from

the rain, thick with slime and teeming with insects and worms.

There he had got his pale cheeks and left his constitution.

And yet, after all his sufferings, he never had hesitated to

pronounce what he believed was for the good of Turkey,

regardless of cost. I know enough of his history to know he

spoke the bare truth. However, his eloquence about ideals

for Turkey grew less as, on emerging from the entrance, we

entered an increasing swell. A few moments before he had

declaimed passionately about the sea, its freedom and beauty.

He now became silent, and, like many a better man, evidently

felt seasick.

The naval lieutenant and I talked long. The night

swallowed us up. I slept on the floor of the cabin. It grew

more rough and the wind increased to a steady roar.

At about midnight we reached a point where an armed

"Drifter" was waiting to take us further on; but the sea was so

rough that we had to stand by until the dawn before we could

tranship our small cargo or come alongside.

As it grew light I discovered us to be alongside a North Sea

whaler, with a great, rising bow, fast engines, besides mast and

sails, and armed with 3-inch guns, anti-aircraft guns, and

loaded up with deep-sea charges. The skipper was a very

rough but efficient and kind man from North Scotland, who

swore lustily at all things. He related interesting experiences

about submarines he had got rid of with his last depth

charge. The sea grew worse. It was impossible to tranship

the cargo, so we proceeded to Mytilene, where we arrived

about 8 a.m., and immediately went on board another monitor.

Her commander and officers had heard of our coming, and had

everything ready--a bath and breakfast. Sweet nectar of

the gods this to me! Privilege to meet freely again cheerful

and free men, to move about the polished decks, handle

a knife and fork once more. I had breakfast on deck. The

wardroom amused me. These lonely officers had cut out from

home papers various pictures of the _Stage_ and the _Field_.

These they had shaved down to the actual figures and pasted

on the walls in all kinds of glorious dresses and attitudes.

It seemed as if they were all alive and just arrested midway

in some pose or movement. My naval friends saw me regarding

them in silence.

"Well, what do you think of them?"

"I wasn't thinking, but wishing they were all alive."

Heathcote-Smith, wearing a commander's uniform of the

R.N.V.R., came to see me. We had a long talk. He was _au

courant_ with local affairs, but much in the dark as regards

Stamboul. I answered a good many inquiries of his, and told

him a good deal that surprised him. He took a few notes, and

thought I should push on at once to the Admiral, which I was

under orders to do. Hadkinson stayed here, as he had some

important local business to settle, and the delegate and I left

in the armed drifter about nine-thirty.

* * * * *

_Mudros, Nov. 15th._--We left the island bay with the

monitor scintillating in the wintry sun, and got at once into

a heavy swell. I was still among the realities of a dream. As

we headed for the open sea, now full of strange, new knowledge

of the great things that had been away from us so long, one fact

impressed itself in my mind. It was that there was no precise

outside information of facts political and otherwise in Turkey,

and particularly in Constantinople.

In other words, in my first contact with the outside world

I had not known for so long, I began to realize that this world

was totally out of touch with the inside (Turkey) from which

I had just emerged. I was making for the fleet with a

Turkish delegate of good standing, straight and loyal, who had

suffered severe imprisonment for his opinions and fidelity to

England. This fleet, for the first time for ages, was now unlocking

the Middle East, and when it entered the Dardanelles

would enter a sea of problems and difficulties--some existing

since Islam, some invented and concocted for the occasion.

I hoped Satvet and I would be able to be of use. Lutfi

became more discursive as we went on, and gave me his files

to read and his papers to see. He offered to do all I wanted.

It was terrible weather, and we were both seedy. About

dark, however, we reached the entrance of the great harbour

of Mudros, heavily boomed and mined. We sped by a lightship,

the drifter having only one dim glim at her masthead.

One heard submarines were still on the look-out.

It was too dark to see anything except here and there red

or green lights at intervals. We went dead slow. The lights

grew thicker. Suddenly, on rounding a bend we saw before

us thousands of lights, many of them twinkling with the Morse

code, messages from ship to ship. They were the lights of

the Entente fleet. We were swept by a searchlight, and got

into touch with H.M.S. _Europa_, the depôt ship that had

called up our wireless at sea, and ordered us to report there.

We were taken on board, where we met Captain Pearce, R.N.,

Commandant of the Base. After some inquiries he communicated

with the flagship.

The admiral (Sir Arthur Calthorpe) wanted to see us. We

went, accordingly, to H.M.S. _Superb_, a spick and span battleship

of the _Temeraire_ class, carrying 12-inch guns. We were taken

down to the wardroom to wait a few moments, as Admiral

Calthorpe had just got into wireless communication with

London on some urgent matters. Here officers swarmed

around us. Some asked for news of their friends, a few of

whom had been captured in flights from Mudros to Stamboul,

or who had been taken down the coast years before. They

gave us news of home, and all seemed very keen on getting

into Stamboul and rounding up the Turk, as they put it. The

while we drank whiskies and soda. They liked Satvet Lutfi,

who was quiet and collected in the face of what he called

"_Quelle destinée!_"

The admiral sent his flag-lieutenant, saying he was

suddenly urgently engaged. I was to go to Admiral Seymour

and Captain Burmester, R.N., Chief of Staff. I presented

Satvet and his embassy, as I had promised. He spoke indifferent

French, which was indifferently understood. I

assisted in indifferent French and Turkish. The admiral

supplemented his French with English, and Satvet his Turkish

with French. He produced letters from many Turks, including

the Grand Vizier and from the ex-Ambassador Tewfik Pasha.

He wanted permission to go to Switzerland to bring the Prince

Subaheddine back, or failing that, to be allowed to meet him

in London on the approval of our Foreign Office, or, failing

that, permission to make communication to our Foreign Office

for transmission to the Prince. Permission for this was

necessary from our Foreign Office. Having heard his

credentials, the admiral agreed to wire.

Among letters for the Prince Subaheddine is the following

from Marshal Izzet Pasha, the last Grand Vizier of Turkey

before the fleet entered. It fell to the lot of this patriot and

renowned soldier, after the flight of Telaat and Enver, to

survey the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

* * * * *

_Translation._--Letter from the Grand Vizier, Ahmed Izzet

Pasha, to Prince Sabah-ed-Din Bey.

Respectfully submitted:

Under physical and moral suffering, I write to your

Highness from the bed to which I am confined by sickness.

I have obeyed the desire of his Imperial Majesty by accepting

the offer of the Grand Vizierate, in the hope that I may be

able to render some service, however small, to my country, in

the appalling straits into which it has fallen, and to relieve

the painful trials now come upon us. At this time, the

assurance of future existence depends upon whether every

man will labour for the common cause in a spirit of patriotism

and self-sacrifice, with one mind and purpose, and divesting

himself of all personal feeling. Most earnestly I beg for the

favour and support of your Highness, who has so great a

share in the welfare of the country. As for a long while past

you have been in political relations with the statesmen of the

Great Powers of Europe, I trust that you may be able to

render valuable services in that direction. A communication

on this subject will be sent to the Minister at Berne.

The moment that the state of the country is somewhat

more normal, steps will be taken to carry out perfectly

independent elections, and it is hoped that, under God's

favour, we may be successful in forming a Government--no

matter who may be its head--on right lines and of a natural

character.

Again assuring your Highness of my entire devotion and

loyal friendship, I have, etc.

(_Signed_) AHMED IZZET.

4th November, 1918.

On being asked why it was so necessary that the Prince

should return, the Turk became most illuminative. The

admiral and his Chief of Staff were most interested, and heard

some startling information. Satvet told them of the hopeless

chaos politically, and how the Prince would unite enough

parties to form a strong, reconstructive Government. He

explained such a Government would be most useful to the

Allies, that unless Stamboul politics were rescued from the

adventurers who had manoeuvred themselves even into the

new Cabinet, the Allies would find that nothing short of a

great army would keep Stamboul. Captain Burmester, R.N.,

a most penetrating questioner, cross-examined Satvet, and

made some notes. The admiral promised to wire London.

Useful as was the information that was forthcoming, I do

not think half the available use was made of Satvet's possibilities.

Matters of intelligence concerning plots, flooding of

mines, issue of false notes, and German spies were really much

less important than the gambits of political tricksters. Afterwards,

I had a talk with Captain Burmester, and gave him

some details of the intelligence I had collected, and of some

which had been added by Satvet. It included the circulation

of false issues of notes, the plot to deposit fresh mines in the

Dardanelles and Bosphorus from vessels, the intended flooding

of the Aregli coal mine and others near the Black Sea, the

removal of property by the Germans still in Stamboul, above

all, the secret machinations of the U. and P. for a pan-Islam

propaganda in Egypt, Palestine, India, Mesopotamia, Persia,

and their machinations with Bolshevism. The latter, incredible

as it may seem, was quite true, and could be located in

various committees and agencies of U. and P.

Russia, it is true, has always been, and is still, the eternal

_bête noir_ and dread of the Ottomans; but certain of their

political tricksters hope, by a spread of the Bolshevik contagion,

to undo the victory of the Allies. The world is tired. If

Russia and Central Europe and the Ottomans require not

only to be beaten in the field, but to be conquered and

subdued, is there the wherewithal to do it in the Entente?

Whether the success of Russia would mean the annexation of

Turkey the Turks would, they say, ignore, for Turkey is very

deep in the mud; just as Enver, Midhat and Co. ignored the

fact that the success of Germany meant the ultimate erasion

of Turkey.

The gambit of Italy in requiring the Adalia coast without

much justification, the gambit of forcing the issue about

Smyrna and the Levant by Greece, the so-called competition

between England, France, and America for the economic

control of the Dardanelles, make the situation ripe with

possibilities of intrigue. To solve the Turkish problem, in my

opinion, it would be necessary to give first place to it, to treat

it as a single issue. It is a situation that cannot admit of

compromise. America is rumoured as being out to capture the

trade resources of the Black Sea empires, in so far as it leaves

her Monroe doctrine intact, which seems to mean privileges

without duties. The French are not so popular as they were,

although French traditional popularity is reviving in Constantinople

just now. And most Turks are convinced that

an international policy of Stamboul would be impracticable.

It would go to the nation with most trade, the biggest fleet of

warships and mercantile marine, _i.e._ England or America. If

_not_ internationalized, the financial basis, which is mostly

French, would give France the lead. But while this process

of "becoming" goes on, Turkey will be left to her own devices

with direful results to the world.

The admiral and his Chief of Staff were most kind to me,

and, busy as they were, found time to inquire about our

captivity. General Townshend had been through just before.

I was asked to see the Director of Naval Intelligence, Colonel

Temple, on shore, whither I went with Satvet, after enjoying

some conversation and drinks provided for us by the "Flag,"

whom the admiral ordered to take us to the wardroom for

some refreshment, of which mine was chiefly whisky, and

Satvet's port. He kept looking around at the excellent

furnishings, and saying "_quelle destinée!_"

Every one was busy, and the fleet was evidently sailing very

soon. We went ashore to some naval officers' quarters, where

a most excellent mess, full of all good fellows and good things,

entertained us. I had very little kit, and was short of blankets.

My tiny room was very cold, but we borrowed what we wanted.

Officers crowded around us in the mess, and asked us questions.

It was, however, very late, but I didn't go to bed until I had

arranged a room for Satvet. My room I shared with a war

correspondent from London, who was much on the _qui vive_

for news. I told him very little, and ordered Satvet not to

speak to him except in my presence. This correspondent was

very grateful for such news as we had to give, and by permission

I drafted for him the first cable concerning Stamboul,

for the Associated Press, which duly passed the censor. He

gave me much news of home, and wanted my experiences,

which I didn't care to say much about just then. I remember

that my first night on shore, outside Turkey, was so cold that

I couldn't sleep very well in my tiny bunk. The next day

I inspected the harbour and surrounding hills, where circular

marks left on the black hillsides showed the site of the great

camp of New Zealanders and Australians for the Gallipoli

operations.

The giant fleet, including over forty first-class fighting

ships alone, lay silent and still below me. One distinguished

the peculiar turrets of the American ships, the line of the

Italian, and two big clumsy Greek cruisers. One's feelings

of thankfulness of release were overwhelming. The vast

assembly of ships stood for victory; but they were also

invested to a great degree with a fascinating political significance

that only one versed in Stamboul intrigue during the

war could appreciate. Here was I with a long pilgrimage of

loneliness, forced inaction, suffering, and sickness behind me,

at last free. Yet, instead of rushing away home by the first

boat, I found myself content to wait here at the door of the

Dardanelles, fascinated with the phenomenon of the Iron Key

about to open the gate of Constantine. Released from the

perpetual convoy of postas, and paralysis, mental and physical,

that is consequent on captivity, one might imagine I would

be eager to look only forward. And yet, even before being

re-introduced to the old world, I found myself taking an all-absorbing

interest in the problem that I had just left behind.

That morning I made another long report to Colonel

Temple, who was supervising Naval Intelligence, and I gave

him the piecemeal information he sought, to the best of my

ability. Enver and Telaat had left for Germany. A double of

the former had cleverly put quite a number off the scent.

Many Turkish officials who were to meet the fleet and

accuse the U. and P. as the source of the downfall of Turkey,

were themselves sleeping partners of the U. and P. opposition

to the Entente that had continued the murder of Armenians,

sheltering of spies, even refusal to say who and where were the

chief delinquents. This was all proceeding apace, _sub rosa_.

From what I had seen in Stamboul just before leaving, I

thought the Turks there preparing for the arrival of the fleet

much like a very naughty lower fourth form at school, hatching

all kinds of devilries for the arrival of their new master.

Satvet and I had lunch in H.M.S. _Europa_ with Captain

Pearce, who was exceedingly kind to us, and very sympathetic

with Satvet's impatience in awaiting the reply cable from

the Foreign Office. It was a very cheerful meal, and even

Satvet bucked up, and eventually said he would hand over

to me his embassy and all his papers if it would help the

fleet to find out who was who.

Colonel Temple sent for me that night and afterwards had

another interview with Satvet for Intelligence. He then

kindly wrote me a letter saying I was proceeding home on

urgent political matters, and immediate passage was requested.

He asked with a smile if I would care to return to Stamboul

with the fleet. I found that prospect, however, rather too

exacting, and, besides, I seemed to promise more usefulness by

going home at once. He informed me confidentially that the

fleet would sail that night for Constantinople, and was very

anxious to know what was the feeling there about the Greeks.

At Smyrna the Greeks had certainly sought to make trouble,

what with their gigantic Greek flags and public demonstration.

That night the gigantic fleet prepared to move. In the

early dawn of the 12th one heard answering signals. Their

lights moved out to sea. When we awoke not a sign was to

be seen of them. Only H.M.S. _Europa_ and a few dozen

gunboats, with a cruiser or two, and some old ships remained.

The next day there was still no reply. I went out to dine

with the officers of the Air Force, which was very strongly

represented there. They were very eager to hear an account

of their recent bombing raids on Stamboul. All the machines

had flown from here. Afterwards I saw some of the wonderful

developments in the plane of modern war. That evening

some ships arrived from Dedogatch, and I heard much of the

preparations for landing here in case the Turks further delayed

surrender. And heavily as the place is fortified there is no

doubt but that we could easily land and, with a march or two,

cut off the Gallipoli peninsula, so depleted are the Turkish

forces.

On the 13th Satvet went sick and was removed to a

hospital boat. He sent in a short letter in French to the

Grand Vizier, explaining how he had been held up. The next

day he was better and got discharged. He was chafing about

the delay of his embassy to the Prince. I now got a room

for us both. There had been a tremendous amount of influenza

in the fleet and I was not certain I hadn't got it myself.

I got permission for him to wire the Commander-in-Chief

of the fleet in Stamboul for immediate leave, either to come

to London or to return to Stamboul. In the meantime we

made ourselves useful to Captain Pearce, now S.N.O.A., who

requested us to visit a large camp of Turkish prisoners. Their

work was to paint and clean the fleet with a host of other

minor fatigues. They wanted to return to Turkey, as English

prisoners, they said, were returning home. They wouldn't

work, so we harangued them, and Satvet told them plainly

what a state their country was in, how short of food the

capital was, and what was more, how they had been betrayed.

They were sullen but ultimately agreed to work for a time.

They certainly looked fighting fit and fat, and well-clothed.

I couldn't help comparing their lot with that of our own poor

fellows. Satvet then communicated with Tewfik Pasha, who

now replaced Izzet Pasha as Grand Vizier, informing him that

he had handed over to me the letters from Izzet Pasha for our

Foreign Office, and for the Prince, and letters from a score or

so of leading men in Stamboul to the Prince with other matters

for the perusal of our Foreign Office and wrote that he would

return to Stamboul. A telegram from the Foreign Office

confirmed this.

CHAPTER XVII

I LEAVE MUDROS WITH DESPATCHES FOR ROME, PARIS,

AND LONDON--ENGLAND!

_Mudros, Nov. 20th, 1918._--Two days ago we lunched

again with the Commandant of the Base on board the

_Europa_. The commander of the _Sikh_, one of the

fastest T.B.D.'s in the fleet, was there also. He left Portsmouth

the evening of the armistice and declared how England

had gone quite mad on armistice night. It was wonderful

to meet some one so fresh from home. He had now been to

the fleet and returned. The entry had been magnificent. In

battle line ahead it had passed through the Dardanelles,

sweepers in front, without mishap through the mine-fields,

although two or three sweepers had been blown up previously

in sweeping and the survivors of the crew of one had just

before reached Mudros. The fleet passed on to Stamboul in

a solemn procession of battleships, cruisers, and light craft in

line ahead reaching 16-1/8 miles. First came the British, then

the French, the Italian, and Greek. The Greeks had most

tactlessly hoisted huge flags but were promptly dealt with.

Then a detachment went to the Bosphorus while the main

fleet went to their prepared anchorage at Ismid some miles off.

They are now preparing to enter the Black Sea.

I equipped Satvet with a few local luxuries and he went

on board a steam yacht. At the last moment, however,

owing to mines breaking away, he could not sail, and lay in

harbour when Heathcote-Smith came from Mytilene _en route_

for Stamboul to assist the Commander-in-Chief. By this time

it was beginning to be realized in Stamboul what were the

difficulties, and Heathcote-Smith was glad to find out all he

could about partisans there, and how few people were sincere.

The first Press reports were certainly misleading. Fitzmaurice,

whose name was more than a terror to the Turks, ought

to have been sent back at once. He had been First

Secretary to the Embassy preceding hostilities, and knew a

good deal of Turkish under-currents. On our entry, there

was too much disposition to listen to Turks on the spot instead

of sorting them out. Turkish exchange, so far from

falling, is rising, and although we have landed a heavy force

at the Dardanelles, the Turks seem all out for a "try-on."

Heathcote-Smith left that night, but Satvet's small yacht was

still weather-bound. I have definitely taken over his mission

and said "Good-bye" to him.

* * * * *

_RETURN_--On the 23rd I boarded H.M.S. _Rowan_, an armed

charge-layer captained by the ex-chief officer of the _Mauretania_.

We were weather-bound for two days further. Then the

weather suddenly cleared, although the seas were still heavy.

We arrived at Malta, where I had to report to General Temple,

Director Intelligence Mediterranean Naval Squadron. He

gave me a through pass to press on urgently to Rome and

Paris, then on to the Admiralty and Foreign Office with a

letter saying I was carrying urgent despatches and required

urgent passage. I took some despatches for him also. I

dined that night with an officer of the Intelligence Department

named Latouche, who afterwards played the piano to me

in his rooms above the moonlight waters of Valetta, dotted

with lights of warships. Then we saw part of La Traviata,

made a final report to General Temple, and I slept in the

Orontes with my despatches from Mudros and Malta, besides

all Satvet's affair. A number of kind invitations reached

me but I regretted I had no time to stay. One was from an

old friend of Newcombe's who wanted news. I wrote to the

colonel, who had evidently abandoned his mission at Mudros

and gone to Egypt. I was extremely lucky in getting my

passage at once, as the gunboat to have taken us had to go

elsewhere. We left at dawn. It was a stormy passage. We

arrived at Taranto across the barrage on the 30th, where

an exceedingly kind letter and telegram from Lord Islington

awaited me, congratulating me on being free and hoping to

see me in a few days. At Taranto I found heavy blockage

of officials, troops, and ex-prisoners of war, arriving from all

quarters, all held up here in camps. Some had been here weeks.

I went on board H.M.S. _Queen_, where Admiral Hannay,

having considered my papers, told me that he with his Staff

was leaving that night for Rome direct and Paris. He offered

to make room for me. We left that night about eight o'clock.

A great crowd of naval and military people, both British and

Italian, came to say good-bye to the admiral. I was fortunate

to secure half the compartment of the King's Naval Messenger,

who proved a most useful companion. His frequent journeys

had acquainted him with all the stopping places and cafés.

That night Admiral Hannay and several of his officers came

into our coupé. We made a most excellent meal from various

baskets and bottles, and they asked me an account of my

travels in Turkey. I found it impossible to talk of any but

the humorous side of it all, the serious history of these long,

shadowy years being like night-mists over tideless marshes,

silent, lifeless and secret. The admiral laughed gaily at the

idea of generals getting C.B. (confined to barracks), and said

I had had a most unique experience. We had quite a night

of it. At dawn we were running through that delightful

country of Southern Italy, of pleasant semi-wooded plains,

dotted every now and then with abrupt little hills on the top

of each of which stands a village crowned by an ancient castle,

walled and steepled. The sight of these hilltop villages,

familiar to every traveller in Italy, catching the rays of the

morning sun I thought most wonderful. We ran past them

for hours, dazzling like bright coins on a green carpet.

About 10 a.m. we arrived at Rome. The hotel accommodation

was overcrowded. I had a bath and meal at the

Continental Hotel near the station, for which I paid the best

part of a sovereign. Then I visited the Excelsior Hotel with

my papers, and later went to the British Embassy with some

papers for Commander de Grey of the English Mission there.

He had just left for England, but I enjoyed a most pleasant

hour or so there in conversation with some English ladies

from the mission. Rome was delightful. I drove and drove

and drove to feel myself free once again. I had tea at an

extraordinary little cake-shop, where pretty women like

butterflies came and went. I smoked from my cab in the

gardens. In the early moonlight I drove past the Coliseum,

but quickly. It stood for history. I didn't want history

just then. In a freakish moment I visited the Forum again.

That was history to be sure. But more so it was philosophy.

It invited one to peer into the Future. This spot that once

ruled the world. This world now at sixes and sevens, that

owned no dominion....

So far as Rome went, I quickly noticed a Bolshevist element

in the Press, in the street, at the station. The nation was

strung up and some were getting out of hand. In one quarter

a fire appeared to be proceeding and some people obstructing

the firemen, although I didn't verify what was the real cause

of the violent rioting in so prominent a street.

I was now beginning to shake off the coma that had

undoubtedly settled upon me. Of one thing I am sure.

Rip van Winkle, after his twenty years of sleep, felt much less

strange than I after my two and a half years.

The station porters were all on strike, so Major Molson

and I wheeled our barrows ourselves. He also was an old

Emmanuel man and going home to stand for Parliament.

We travelled together on the same train as the admiral's suite.

At Genoa and Turin we got in touch with soldiers returning

from other fronts. The latter place was feet deep in snow,

and icicles hung from the verandahs. At Modan we had to

change, and in the restaurant I found myself sitting opposite

a face I knew well, and was very troubled at not knowing who

it was. I had forgotten much. It was a Major Murray,

from one of the batteries at Hyderabad, who had been with

me before leaving India. I learned from him that a good

many of my friends were casualties, the survivors all over the

world, and that few had counted me as alive. He had been

badly knocked about by a shell himself.

We arrived at Paris in early morning and again wheeled our

kit. I learned here that General Cox, to whom also I was to

report, had been accidentally drowned just before. He was one

of the most brilliant Intelligence Officers of the Entente, and

every one was deploring his loss. He had been a close friend

of Colonel Newcombe, and apart from my intelligence duties,

I had looked forward to giving him an account of the colonel,

who had asked me to do so the first moment possible. This

was only the prelude to many rude shocks I was to get. One

might say that for me the casualties had happened in one

night, for I heard news now for the first time of casualties

that had happened in early 1915, and casualties had been

going on ever since. The first thing I saw in _Le Temps_ was

that Rostand, the great French writer, had died. Like

Cyrano, he had left, so he said, to carry word of victory to the

great French dead.

I finished my duties at Paris and left that evening. For

a meal at the Café Amercain I paid a gold sovereign. The

place was full of Americans, and all other places were also

crowded. France was tired. Since I had left there in

November, 1914, she had aged and the last of her pretty frocks

had been put away.

As I was travelling on a naval pass they read me for

Captain, R.N., instead of R.F.A., the former ranking as a

brigadier in the army. This meant a seat in a packed train.

Molson and I left for Boulogne that night and arrived at dawn.

Other politicians were _en route_. The magic word was to be

"Coalition." We had a long discussion as to the merits of

coalition, I holding that in time of war it was good, as in

home politics there was only the question of union. But when

peace comes the international or foreign policy becomes

constructive, and criticism in the ascertainment of the centre

of political gravity is necessary. To me it seems true that

many of the ideals of the war already have to be exchanged

for the hard fact of compromise. Compromise is always bad

and weak and muddlesome beyond a certain point. But the

problems of the world I have recently left can admit of no

compromise! The Turkish problem must be solved or left!

Boulogne also has changed a great deal. Hotels have

become hospitals and it seems very English.

We left by boat in the fogs at early dawn, a number of

senior officers returning on short leave being on board. I was

astonished at the youth of many of them. It told me of the

drainage of the war.

About ten o'clock I saw again the thin line of white cliffs--England.

A few quick moments and I stood on the quay at

Folkestone. An hour later in a refreshment car! It was a

carriage for the most part of silent men from all fronts. Out

of the window, hedges, fields, crows, trees, England flew by.

I had a desire to get out and walk every yard. I had an

impulse. No, it is too private to record.

I was free. England, England, England.

EPILOGUE

_Oxford and Cambridge Club, March, 1921._--The publication

of the foregoing, which awaited the recovery of

some of the manuscript from Turkey, has been still

further delayed owing to my having been cut off from communications

in Persia last year.

Several months after the Armistice I married, and with my

wife returned to Baghdad, where I took up the post of Chief

Legislative Draftsman to the Judicial Department. To have

returned to the past scene of the events of my captivity is an

odd experience, and my friends have asked me for a recent

impression. This, however, might lead to controversial

matters, and for such there is here neither place nor room.

However! On our return in November last year we

stopped at Kut for two days. I add a last note from my diary.

_P.O.'s Quarters, Kut, November 8th, 1920._--We left Baghdad

by train about 7 a.m. on November 6th, day travelling being

necessary on account of the recent revolt. The whole line is

heavily blockhoused. It lies along the route of our historic

retreat after Ctesiphon back to Kut. Somewhere beneath the

desert dust is the double trail of bones; bones of the men

who fell in the retreat, and bones of the men who fell or

crawled six months later in the captive columns.

We are staying with the Political Officer, a tremendously

kind and interesting fellow. My wife was most curious to

behold first hand the precincts of our doings in the siege, some

of which I had described to her from my captivity. The

foreshore has quite changed. My artillery observation posts

of sandbags, that once, tattered and battered with shell fire,

defied the Turkish marksmanship to the end, has given

place to a fine street, and this house stands where the garrison

gunners kept a similar vigil, and where our flag, shot into

ribbons, was hauled down on the fateful day. I had no

difficulty, however, in locating many familiar scenes. We

visited General Townshend's house, where, as the Jewish

occupant explained, "the General issued his communiqués!"

It suffered from our own guns after the Turks entered, and the

minaret also was damaged by some accidental shot.

My wife knew several of our garrison when her father's

regiment, the 24th S.W.B.'s, was in India years ago. I entertained

her with stories of the amusing side of Kut. She was

highly delighted at the little Arab boy's question as to whether

she also had been in the siege!

We climbed the roof. The pattern of the shell burst that

killed poor Colonel Courtenay and Garnett and Begg is still

there. Then we visited the horse lines and took a car over

the crumbling trenches to the Brick Kilns, where General

Smith and I had our first dug-out. It seemed strange, indeed,

to go along "on top" in a car where for so long to show even

a _topee_ was to offer a dead mark to the Turks over the river.

The Brick Kilns most of all retain and impart to one again

the spirit of Kut. The dug-out is still dug out, and bits of

blown-up guns all round about. The position of Colonel

Broke-Smith's Battery (63rd R.F.A.) I located near by. One

seemed to hear his genial voice as he stumped along these very

trenches to see if his guns were on their night lines. He was a

magnificent gunner, and neither the siege nor captivity sapped

far into his joyous indifference. I remember delivering a

message to him under a sharp fire in the action of Um-al-Tabul,

glorious to Townshend's memory. Shells were bursting

all around as he sat up his limber pole. I should think it

impossible for any voice to sound more gleeful and exhilarating,

and at the same time with more whip in it than his. He had

got the precise range of that glorious target of crowded Turks,

surprised at 1000 yards. Under each burst of his shrapnel I

saw the running figures suddenly changed to flat black patches.

In fact, we could distinguish bursts by gaps suddenly appearing

in the black horde. He came to lunch at my club on our

meeting in the War Office after the Armistice, and admitted that

when the Turks were particularly troublesome in his captivity,

he used to recall with much satisfaction that glorious target.

As we walked to position after position, incidents long

forgotten came up to the surface of my mind. Here was

where we made the ramp for the debouch, there where poor

Bombardier X was sniped. This was where the floods burst

in over the bank and flooded us out. That where we made

our last line. We came across a patch on the _maidan_, thick

with shell cases and pieces of segment. This to my delight I

located as the position of my old battery, the 76th R.F.A.

The six gun emplacements are clearly discernible, and my

dug-out, in which I had spent so many weird hours, gaped

eloquently before me. Grass grew on the walls.

The picturesque position of 86th R.F.A. in the palms is

overgrown, but the smashed trees and shell-pierced wall and

dug-outs gave me my bearings. The fort has been erased.

Last of all I succeeded in finding in the town the billet of

the Sixth Divisional Ammunition Column, which later on I

had shared with Tudway and Mellor. The upper story that

had been partly demolished by the shell which occasioned

the bruise to my back has now been cut away. The front

door was barred and the billet vacant. By entering through

an adjoining house, and scaling the wall on top over which

the Turks had swarmed, I got down and forced the door for

my wife and Major Jeffery to enter. The cupboard which I

had filled with bricks was still there, as also the room in which

the shells had entered four and a half years before. Only

four and a half years, and yet how far had I walked and seen

since then! The back wall over which we used to peep at

the Tigris is smashed down by bombardment, and the whole

place bespattered with bullet marks.

The last glimpse I had had here was of my poor Don Juan's

black tail on the verandah post, and of triumphant Turks

kicking our orderly. To stand here once again, but as a free

man accompanied by my wife and a Political Officer in that

fire-changed scene, in that spot of long-enforced soliloquy, was

surely more wonderful than coincidence. Cocky would have

called it Destiny, and Tudway, "Outside chance."

While we were talking, an Arab from next door burst in,

greatly excited. "Sahib chunet hina fil mahassere?" ("Was

Sahib here in the siege?") I answered him: "Naam. Kasr

mali fil mahassere." ("Yes--my palace of the siege.") He

laughed. Kasr means palace. We remembered each other

perfectly. He continued to salaam at my feet as something

too wonderful. He said he remembered selling us some date

juice (at an enormous figure, by the way).

He was surprised I had learned to speak to him in Arabic,

and we had a long talk on old days. He recounted their

troubles and persecutions after the Turks entered. A small

Arab boy here at the P.O.'s house remembers me up in my

observation post. An excellent little fellow, he has followed

me about everywhere, or waited at my door--"Arid ashuf

Sahib. Ma'arid backsheesh." "I want to see Sahib. I do

not want backsheesh."

_10 p.m._--An hour ago I was about to go to bed, but the

moon was floating on the Tigris. Two moons; one in the

sky, one in the water, just as of old. It was irresistible, so I

went forth with a pipe.

Once again Kut is asleep. Over the river Woolpress

throws its familiar shadow, only a little more dilapidated and

shattered. Beyond that, beyond the palms and the town, all

around, skirting the desert, encircling--the trenches are falling.

History fades. The desert encroaches once more.

Since last here I have lived centuries of time, at no moment

very far from, and in some precious moments very close to, the

silent Heart of the East. Silent yet not inaudible its murmurs

can reach a patient and humble listener. And into two or

three years of captivity "from within" may be crowded the

revelation of the experience of many years. In these precious

moments the whisperings remain largely inarticulate, and then

in our difficulty we mistakenly identify the desert with its

effect on us. Robert Hichens clothes it with mystery, and

Chu Chin Chow with the transmutability of bright colours.

Here in this very spot, the first British army of history to

do so, its dauntless heroism and sacrifice unavailing, succumbed

to the finiteness of mortals. From this spot the survivors

were trailed in dying columns across the ancient routes of the

East, an object-lesson of the assailability of our prestige. It

will take more than a successful campaign to erase that

memory. The moral is we should not attempt what we are

not prepared to carry through.

To-night, then, in this moment of a complete cycle in my

history, I would like to think the advancement we have made

in this country is consolidated and permanent. Is it? Apart

from the fact that the arrangements for this country exist

under the Treaty of Versailles, a treaty largely inoperative

on account of divergence in the Entente, do we yet realize

that a good deal of the recent rebellion is a national movement

in a country extraordinarily hard to contain with a depleted

army? Is it yet fully realized that for the first time in the

history of an Empire we have in this country--mandate though

it be--a nursling territory with every flank, except a mile or

two of sea, politically open?

On one side awakened Russia, adjoining Persia of grandee

or gentleman bandit government; on the north, the hornet's

nest of the Highlands of Kurdistan; on the west, the illimitable

eternity of the Arab's desert.

Adequate garrisoning is out of the question for financial

reasons, and we are just realizing here, as in Ireland, that to

conquer a country is one thing and to police it another.

General Townshend's advance represented the high-water

mark of his conquest--until he was cut off! But now "they

are all about us." To impose any programme on these people--as

is the case also with the Turks--which they do not

absolutely endorse, must involve policing. How earnestly did

people at the Armistice, who knew Turkey and Turkish

intrigues, urge this fact on our advisers at home! And

now, two years afterwards, I see that the Treaty of

Sèvres is to be modified in favour of the Turks. How very

clearly this was foreseen as inevitable by some of us! The

desert and Mohammedan question must be examined _ab initio_.

It should not be contingent on or sequential to other matters

of European politics--because it is of a different world.

The fact is that, in the desert, nature is at a minimum.

There is no mountain ravine, no forest to determine the path

of man. Here are the Great Silence, the Great Solitude,

Illimitable Space, and a Sea of Time. Here introspection is

at a premium, the mind is unfettered and chainless. Perhaps

it is free. And in this world of Stillness and Emptiness man

moves as a considerable object. From the desert came all

the prophets. Cities and customs arise and disappear into the

sand. Dynasty succeeds dynasty, as conquest succeeds conquest.

In the end you have the sand and the horizon as at first.

Can it be wondered at, therefore, that in such soil a transplanted

mushroom of civilization cannot be expected to

flourish? In 1914 Mesopotamia was much as two thousand

years ago. An advanced civilization with elaborate impedimenta

is deposited on to it. This civilization, then, must either

have an army adequate to protect it or it must conform to

whatever standard of efficiency, to whatever degree of perfection,

the local inhabitant will tolerate.

This cardinal fact has been obscured by a mass of controversy

and interesting side issues, _e.g._ to what extent the

possibilities of this country can ever be realized unless we

enter on a gigantic irrigation scheme and plug up the hills

at the source of these rivers. But the farther afield and the

more elaborate our development, the more this cardinal fact

holds good.

Goethe tells us to take the duty nearest to us. But this

is precisely what the hard-working officials of the Civil Administration

have done. We went from commitment to commitment,

and this duty led to that, this problem to the one

adjoining. Which may make for good progress in war, but

for a programme of peace it overlooks the cardinal principle.

Nor do I think that the Arab can be expected to appreciate

the fact that pending the arrival of a definite Treaty with

Turkey, the spirit of government and development must be

expected to be arbitrary--for we declared otherwise in our

proclamation to them. Greater clairvoyance and experience

in the direction of policy might have borne steadily in view

this cardinal fact instead of relentlessly pursuing the god

Efficiency. The god Efficiency was invented by Prussia, and

with all its completeness and perfection the war found it to

be only a machine. It overlooked human factors; it missed

cardinal facts.

Yet, coming back to Kut once more! None of our beleaguered

garrison on this Babylonian plain could have believed

it humanly possible to effect such a metamorphosis in this

land in so short a space of time. Wharves, shipping, and

railway systems, electric light and fans, Courts of Justice,

Revenue, Agricultural and Finance Departments, Government

Press, British and Arab daily papers--it has been built

up by great and unsparing effort, and so far as earnestness

and will to succeed went, the officers of the Civil Administration

have worked tremendously hard. My own chief, Sir

Edgar Bonham-Carter, I have known work continuously all

through the heat from early morning until late into the night.

* * * * *

It was from this bank in December, 1915, that, previous

to his arrival recently as a High Commissioner, I last saw

Sir Percy Cox, then Chief Political Officer, as he left by

the last boat for downstream. I talked with him this

week before leaving Baghdad, and found him much older.

He must have had a long spell of work without leave. The

Persian Treaty which he made for us at Teheran is, I hear,

moribund, and this must have been a great disappointment to

him.

Nevertheless, he has undertaken the enormous responsibility

and difficulties here most courageously. The Arab

welcome to him on his arrival the other day was little short

of homage to a king. It has changed the situation a good deal.

To-morrow we go from here by paddle-boat to Basra, en

route for home on leave.

Bacon tells us that writing maketh an exact man. Perhaps

to know when one has said enough is to be exact.

Let us then away from Kut at once and for ever.

* * * * *

_London, March, 1921_ (_continued_).--Kuttavi!--I have cut.

Or rather, Kuttaverunt, the doctors have, as they think I

should not return to the climate of Mesopotamia.

I am back in this dear sweet land, beautiful even in all

her sorrows. Back, round the pivot of palm trees to where I

was before the war, behind me the eloquent vacuum through

which the world has rolled. It is almost a complete vacuum,

as _Punch_ might say, a host of flitting, fading shadows.

But at times I see a long, wide river winding over endless

plains, with here and there a solitary palm. And I hear the

long cry proceeding from the dark figure crouching in the bows

as he takes the soundings, "Bahout pa-a-ni!"--the long, lone

cry that ever and anon by day and night floats intermittently

to the ears of the traveller in that ancient land.

It, too, has borrowed from the desert something that is

deterministic and ineffaceable.

Back to this window. And so, "Another cycle is

complete!"

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lieut. Matthews, R.E., and Lieut. Sweet, 2 7 Gurkhas.

[2] Col. Newcombe, Captain Gardiner and I received mention in the

post-war despatch "for gallantry in escaping or attempting to escape

while prisoners of war" (5.5.19).

[Illustration: MAP OF TREK

(including plan of escapes)

CONSTANTINOPLE

and the Bosphorus]

Transcriber's Notes

Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired.

The following alternate spelling appear and have not been changed:

"arabanchi" / "arabunchi", "camphoradine" / "camphoradyne", "Chupattis"

/ "Chupatties", "d'Arici" / "D'Arici", "Erzerum" / "Erzeroum", "juls" /

"juals", "Kut-el-Amara" / "Kut-el-Amarah", "Modarnia" / "Modernia",

"Pasha" / "Pascha", "Rumanian" / "Roumanian", "Shalmanaser" /

"Shalmaneser", "Sunaiyat" / "Sunnaiyat", "Teufik" / "Tewfik".

Hyphen removed: "sandbags" (p. 77), "foothills" (p. 189), "upstream" (p.

6).

Hyphen added: "dust-storms" (p. 175), "far-away" (p. 146), "re-named"

(p. 97), "saw-mill" (p. 277), "water-falls" (p. 278).

The following words appear both with and without hyphens and have not

been changed: "cliff-side", "lime-stone", "mid-stream", "nick-named",

"out-distanced", "rail-head", "sea-sick", "war-path".

P. 23: "Um-ul-Tabul" changed to "Um-al-Tabul".

P. 34: duplicate "in" removed (to where I was in the trenches).

Pp. 46, 53: "Essinn" and "Es-sin" changed to "Essin".

P. 57: "packal" might be a typo for the old word "packald" or the word

"pack" but has been left unchanged.

P. 93: added "a" (in a successful operation).

P. 98: "blurr" changed to "blur" (the only blur on the silvery

brightness).

P. 99: "entritis" changed to "enteritis" (the increasing cases of

enteritis).

P. 172: "abominally" changed to "abominably (treated our men

abominably).

P. 189: "Hammerbug" changed to "Hummerbug".

P. 199: "clink" changed to "chink" (through a chink in the door).

P. 222-3: space removed (La illaha, illa la).

P. 241: "to" added (who sits next to King A.).

P. 274: "companion" changed to "companions" (to my former companions).

P. 314: "satantic" changed to "satanic" (a satanic beast).

Caption of illustration facing p. 326: "CAPITIVITY" changed to

"CAPTIVITY".

P. 357: "saw" changed to "was" (The noise was maddening).

P. 379: "oppositon" changed to "opposition" (the U. and P. opposition).

P. 381: "CHAPTER XVIII" changed to "CHAPTER XVII".

End of Project Gutenberg's The Secrets of a Kuttite, by Edward O. Mousley