IEAR 86. ONTARIO, SATURDAY, British Whig | JULY 5, 1919 SBCOND SECTION em ere | ems In the Twilight of the The Amazing Experiences of a Captured Bri BY CAPTAIN ALAN BOTT, M.C,, RAF. Author of "Cavalry of the Clouds" IlI--Starvation, Terrorism, It was as a prisoner at Nazareth-- then the Turco-German: General Headquarters on the Palestine Front that 1 first met at close guarters the tertorism and misery under which Turkey lived during the war. 1 was in solitary confinement, shut up in a tiny room about ten feet long [ by six fest! de, My fugniture was a bed with one greasy blanket and a, rickety little table, on which stood | an earthemware: carafe for the bad' water supplied to me. The only wa- ter in Nazareth, by the way, that was not bad and lable to contain disease germs, was that drawn from the fa- mous "Well. of. the Holy Virgin: and this the . and Turkish officers and the Germaw soldiers mo- nopolized. Solitary confinement makes a man utterly wretched. = The prisoner of war, left all alone and with nothing to distract his mind, can only think, and think, and think--of what his old unit is doing, of whether he might have escaped capture had he dope something different, of when and if he will hear from home, of whether he will @e to live through months or years captivity. | 1 ke to nobody, except when a Christian woman came to tidy the room esch morning, while a guard! watched through the open door to see that we did not conspire. This woman---ragged, bootless and gaunt would whisper fierce questions in broken French, as she threw water on the dusty r or stabbed with a hairpix some. 0) f the many bugs that lived : "Why come not English? We 3 Pigs of Turks!" Ana very hungry. f 1 had to whisper back that the Bog- lish would certainly come and drive} the pigs of THFks out of Nazareth. When she had taken her stooping back and herspatechwork clothes out of the room ould probably not have the chance to k to a fellow. human, even in a whisper, fof the Npurs. 1 had noth- 'there was nothing geén through the tiny yf + to: takg my mind Trom my © For hours at a time 1 She few feet across the room and back again, then sat on the bed and looked through the window at what little 1 could see of Nazar- 'eth. 4 2 & Chained Prisoners. Several times during the first few days I noticed men, women and boys' walking in a huddled bunch, with guards round them. Some had their hands shackled, some had a chain linking one arm and' one leg, others were chained: by the arm to the next 3 They moved aim- tessly over the hillside, presumably for exercise, while the guards push- change after bread and water, va- ried by thin soup. My Friend Jean Willi. Sickness and bitterness of mind made me far from hungry, so that I was unable to eat much of what the Germans sent me. The Turkish corporal of the guards, the sentry who stood outside my dooreand one or two of his friemds---<all hungry and In rags--would hang around in the corridor until the remains were taken out, then put their dirty hands into the dishes, snatch pieces of meats or vegetables, and stuff them into their mouths. AS the days passed my confimement became less solitary. The food from the German mess brought me a use- ful friend in the dragoman who came with it.« 'He was an Israelite, erigil- nally from Salonika, with a long, tongue-twisting name impossible to remember. 1 called him Jean Wil- 1, French being our medium of con- versation He was well off, and had beet an official of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople. For the first two years of the war he had kept out of the army by bribing Turkish officers and policemen, but finally the press gang took him. Jean Willi's prineipal subject of conversation was the stupidity and general beastiiness of the Turks among whom he had to live. Also, he was never tired of asking why the British left the Dardanelles. They could have forced their way through with ease had they stayed a week longer; he said, as the Turkish troops were at their ldst gasp and nearly out. of ammunition. : Every one in Constantinople was. expecting this ad and beat any who stumbled or straggled. One morning 1 was visited by the governor's afde-de-camp, just after such a party had disappeared from view . I asked If these shackled and brow-besgten prisoners were Chris- tians. "My dear sir," said the aide-de- ' eamp, with all the blandness of the educated Turk when telling a He, "we put chains on nobody, and our Christian criminals are as well treat- od as others. You must be mis- taken." It was curious that after this con- versation I never again saw groups of civilian captives at "P sibly the governor's e-camyp took care that they should be taken Jor exercise on the far side of the © hil This same officer paid me further visits, for he was learning French and wanted Once, when he was in my room, I saw from the on. ¥ al 'to happen, and most people were [hoping for it. All the gold in the "Ottoman Bank (of which he was at the time an official had been trans- Iferred to Asia Minor', whither the | Turkish Ministry had planned to re- tire. Later, I heard this same story lof the Turkish troops being at their Jast gasp from scores of Turkish subjects, including officers who had tually fought in the campaign. It was from Jean Willi that I first !jearned how thousands of: people in | Minor had died or were dying of stdrvation. 1 was able to verify his atements from personal experience, any British prisoners in faet, died .of hunger. A small loal of bread at non-military rates cost us twelve plastres (half a dollar as pre-war values), sugar was about three hun- {dred piastres a kilo, and tea more {than two thousand pilastres a kilo, ywhile five thousand piastres were needed to buy a shoddy suit of clothes. " in the Lebanon province starva- tion seemed to have been organized systematically. Magnificent forest lands ceased to exist when the Turks cut down thousands upon thousands of trees--cedars, fruit trees, nut trees, and others--{for use as fuel on the railways ,cqal being unobtain- Crops were commandeered, 1 |oe sable. either without payment or for small} sums in' almost worthless paper mo-{ |ney, while the population thet pro- on hem « not itself find en- ou; non" are no more; and sheer destitu- 'tion is responsible for the fact that forty per cent. pre-war population of g on is no more. . The ruin of Cop them. Their small bodies were then removed for burial; and more mothers left. more infants against the walls and doorways. X The daily deaths of babies from starvation averaged about fifty in Damascus; and Aleppo could boast the same mournful average. Yet the Germans were sending train-load after train-load of grain and fruit out of the country; German privates were better fed than Turk- ish majors aid the Turkish politi- cians made fortunes by juggling with the food supplies. The Young Turk political organizations, instead of trying to remedy this dreadful state of affairs, carried out a. policy which directly promoted destitution. "To the devil with the poor. Let them rot," 'were the words used by the Turkish Minister for Food Sup- fields. ply, when a prominent neutral lady in rags, lousy, half-starved and of- ten bootless--lived like beasts of the They were kept from open revolt by fear of the Germans, the prospect of loot, a total lack of in- telligence, and the stupid fatalism ingrained in the Turkish peasant. Several times during the train journey from Aleppo to Asia Minor I saw soldiers running from the rail- way line towards the hills, under cover of dusk, while their officers fired at them with revolvers. They were leaving a life of obedient mis- ery in the army for one of lawless misery as brigands. Hundreds of thousands deserted from the army, and of these scores of thousands to kototehmnouhzu-o of thousands took to the mountains and wild places of Asia Minor, there to become robbers. Travelling on foot, on horseback, or on donkey- Tur sh Empire tish Officer : In Colloboration with CAPTAIN FRANCIS YATES BROWN yright, 1919, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. Bribery and Brigandage separate from their families, with the intimation that the lives of relatives or friends would pay for a breach of loyalty, When I was a prisoner at Damascus Arab officers often stole into my room when the Turkish com- mandant was absent, and spoke of their hatred of the Turks and their longing for the British to advance. And in Constantinople Enver Pasha, the pseudo-Napoleonic war minister, who was the most prominent man in the rotting empire, and Telaat Pasha, ne ming grand vizier who was ond® a telegraphist at Adrianople, were dreaming of a greater Turkey, that was to include the Maritza Basin and all the Southern Dobrudja, the Crimean Peninsula and the whole of the Caucasus. In the capitol, I found, conditions were rather better than in Anatolia. But for forced loans many Greeks of my acquaintance urged him to re- lieve the distress. Ruined Fishermen of Haifa. +1 remember being taken to the port of Haifla in May, 1918, and see- ing line upon line of fishing boats stranded on the beach, with great holes knocked in their sides so that they might not be floated. The rea- gon for this, I was told, was that several of ghe fishermgn had taken their craft to Cyprus and deserted to the British. To prevent desertion and espionage, therefore, nobody was allowed to put to sea fram the Medi- terranean ports; with the result that thousands of people who lived by fishing were left utterly destitute. The misery we lived thtough was such as would be quite Impossible in & Western country. The soldiers-- - your heart flutters, be careful An attack is lable to come on at any - Excitement, over-exertion or £ to eat. The "Cedars of Leba- {the highest degree. Jtully kill\ for the sake of a palr of "i "back across Anatolia was unsafe in In every fast- ness one would be certain to meet a band of armed ruffians, destiute and utterly reiless, who would cheer- boots gr a' shirt. Moré than a few German soldiers who had walked a mile or two from the béaten track were killed by bri gands, Many of the gendarmes sent to deal with the robber bands wers found dead,with their heads battered in. Many others were hand and glove with them, and gave informa- tion of possible plunder. Sometimes a gang would descend on a village, kill a few inhabitants as a warning to the others, and proceed to steal everything worth the stealing before they retired. Three friends of mine, British offi- cers, once escaped from Afiion-Kara. Hissar, in the centre of Asia Minor; with the intention of travelling southward to the coast. During the daytime they hid in the woods or caves, and avoided observation by coming into the open only at night. time. All went well gntil, on a hill- side, they found os rounded, by brigamds: offered resistance, and was promptly shot dead." The other two were strip- they were recaptured one was quite, Lown of drain From 1aedrr. ped of their clothes, so that when} and Armenians remained untouched, if they left politics alone, There was plenty of paper money about, and not a little gold. Those were the days of extravagant speculation, when min- isters: received colossal bribes little politicians made little fortunes by acting as go-betweens, and rich merchants manfpullated so as to get hundred per cent profit. A large consignment of sugar, for example, 'was received from Austria at twenty plasttes a kilo. The cus toms authorities held it up and stole as much as they dared for private bar- gaining, while the merchants, poli ticians and ministerial underlings bar- gained behind closed doors. Then & certain-amount of the sugar was sups the merchants who had bid highest for the priviléges, at more than two hundred piastres a kilo. There was no attempt at civilian rationing, so that all but the wealthy went sugar- Jess. And the chances were that even the sugar. bought by the wealthy would have been mixed with powder- ed marble. naked, and the other was clad in nothing but a sack, which a kind fhrigand 8 | Black Sea had givén bim for a walst|, _remen from' my days, these were plied, at nominal rates, to the army, the navy and the eivil officials; and{ the rest was sold in opén market, by policeman discovered a deserler or a man avoiding military service, so much the better for the police-man --if the army-dodger possessed mon~ ey. Anybody who knows the Turk- ish poli¢e would consider five dollars a fair bribe for the privilege of re- maining in civilian clothes a fort- night longer. When, with the passage of time, the peed for soldiers became more urgent, the rates of police blackmail rosa even higher. - Finally the police were themselves spied upon, so that they might mot continue to let men of means slip through the mili- tury net. Thereupon the blackmail charges rose yet again, for the coun-| ter-bribety spies 'insisted on 'them selves being bribed. When a rich man--Turk, Greek, Jew or Armenjan---really was cons scripted he could always pretend sickness, bribe the military doctor to send him to a hospital, bribe the hospital who examined him, and, finally, bribe the medical board to give him leave. At the large hos- pitals in Constantinople, such as the one in which I shammed mental de- rangement, the recognized tariff was two hundred dollars for each month's leave, with pretended com- plaints suggested by the doctors by way of bouns: Wikile in hospital I once "offered my ward doctor one thousand dol- lars if I could be evacuated to Eng- Jand as an unfit prisoner. The doc- tor was delighted, and would have earned the money if the Ministry of War had not sent its own medical staff to decide which prisoners were to be exchanged. . The "miserable, exploited . popula- tion seemed powerless to translate discontent into action. It lacked courage, cohesion. and capacity for self-sacrifice, The pro-German Min- istry- was thus able to. carry on un- hindered its policy of terrorism, Both with us and among themselves. the people talked sedition in whis- pers; but for the rest. it folded its STARTING IN BUSINESS, John Cornelius Has Opened Under- taking Establishment on Princess St. ~ JOHN CORNELIUS. After thirty years' experience in the undertaking business, John Cor- nelius, son of the late Capt. Johp Cornelius, has opened a modern es {give promptly. {relieve these troubles, "jcasionally to the well CONSTANTINOPLE, THE CORRUPT. bands for the British to save it. Many times, in the bazaars énd public places of Constantinople, hatred of the Germans snd of Enver Pasha was whispered to me, follow- ed by questions as to when the Al- les would win the war. .Once 8 par- ty of us were sitting with our guards in the Petits Champs Tea Garden, when a waiter hid underneath our bill a small piece of piper of which wag written "Vive Les Anglais!" Ofte; the wishes of the population for peace gave Wirth to lying reports that wildfired through every bazaar of the country, only to leave the population more de ring than ever after it realized that such in. ventions were. untrue. "Time -and again it was murmured to me at Damascus or Akon-Kara-Hissar that a revolution had broken out im«{Con- stantinople, or that Enver Pashw bad been assassinated, or that the Sultan loved the British and was about to open the Dardanelles, or that Bul- garia had declared war on Turkey. For a time such fairy tales gave birth to hope in the prison camps, but afterwards they occasioned. only bitter mirth, Yet these rumors were not always as innogent as they appéared. We ourselves started ome Or two stories on their sensational rounds, by way of propaganda. After the first of the 1918 bomb raids on Constantin- ople Captain Yeais threw out a hint thatAhe attatk was not | the work of the British at all, but was a display of Huan frightfulness, to show what would hap it. the Turks' loyalty to Germany wavered. After an interval of weeks this beau- tiful lie was whispered back to 'him by a Greek, with every . circumi- stance and detail to 'give it an ap- pearance of truth. J % Nothing, in fact, to be believed in' too' amazing to be at the time 1.w ing indeed, was true. - funeral directing. Mr, Cornelius is fully acquainted with all the in- tricacies of the business, having éom- menced his apprenticeship when only thirteen years of age. For aty years he was with the Ww. MM, Drennan and later tdok over the mane agership of the unde b- lishment of T, F. Harrison. r Harrison refired frow that bi a Mr. Cornelius Becgme sociated: 8. 8. Corbett "for Ry ane years has served him. Mr. ) has mow opened his premises and many friends in the city will wish him success in the endeavor for which he is so well qualified... ' LL ------ Save the Children Mothers who keep a box of Baby's Own Tablets in the house may. feel that the lives of their little r v {reasonably safe during the hot ther. Stomach trou , cholera in« fantum and diarrhoea earry oft thou Asands of little ones every summer, in {most cases because the mother does medicine not have a safe' at to Baby's Own vent their coming on. The tablets Se pecially good hye they regulate the nd Keej the' stomach sweet tablishiment at 274" Princess street, and Is prepared to Wo embulming and