¢ SATURDAY, JULY. 26, 1910. THE DAILY BRITISH WHIG PAGE FIVE - In the Twilight of the Turkish Empire The Amazing Experiences of a Captured British Officer { et 5 i were 8Y CAPTAIN ALAN BOTT, M.C,, RAF. ; Author of "Cavalry of the Clouds" One day the Turkish Commandant of a prison camp in Asia Minor ask- ed for the names of British officers who belonged to distinguished famil- 8. "What on earth for?" was the gen- eral speculation. Now for months the captives had miraged a forthcoming exchange of risoners between Great Britain and 'urkey. What could the request mean, argued the optimists, but that the Turkish political bosses wanted the return of some of their friends who were interned in Egypt, and were 'giving in exchange prisoners "of dis- tinguished family"? This comfortable theory was widely | accepted, and knowing how the Turks rbow down before rank, all began searching their memories for titled or {famous "relatives and ancestors. {Those who could produce no real names claimed to be cousins, nephéws, sons-in-law or great-grandsons of i such startling people as the Duke of { Plaza Toro, Baron Beanfeast and the : Lord-Lieutenant of Limehouse. The Commandant chose a small band of claimants and sent them to Constantinople. Joyful in the belief that they were en route to England, home and beauties they shook hands with the lesser-aristocrats and accep- ted congratulations. A few days later they found them- selves in an unclean dungeon of the Turkish Ministry of ar prison. There they remained for several weeks, weakening and sickening un- der disgusting conditions and the lack of exercise, Owing to false re- ports that Turkish office in Egypt were being badly treated Enver Pasha had decided to punish a number of Britishers by way of reprisal, and the military authorities chose for the pur- pose men "of distinguished family." Finally one of the strafed officers caught typhus ig the prison and died as a direct result of medical neglect. Thereupon the Turks began to get frightened, and sent the rest of the aristocrats and near-aristocrats to proper interment camps. Among the tyrannies and tortures that made the last days of Turkey's dominion over Christian peoples equal in terror tg any period during her cen- turies of misrule, none were more terrible than the prison life in the Ministry of War. For sheer hor- ror. parts of this "Black Hole of Con- bi a e," gs it became known, could nintch the Bastille at its worst; or the Stone House at rman in the days of the Mahdi. Last year it was with- out doubt the most dreadful prison in the world. 1 first zlimpsed the disgusting con- ditions of Turkish® prisons when (as already described); I shared, with an Arab charged as a spy, a cell in the riminal jail at Nazareth. Afterward, Damascus and here, I met Ar- fans, Greeks, Arabs and Jews, as as man rkish officers, who at avi wa. Bi. Bo rooms, withou n given the - semblance of a trial. Some! they If 'thelr crimes were comparatively minor ones--such as theft, desertion or the murder of somebody without influence ~~ these whe had money could probably bribe their way to re- lease. But if they were "in" for political offences not even baksheeth could 'free them, for the Young Turk politicians, whose domination depend- ed on violence, took no chances with those openly hostile to them. ~ Politi- cal prisoners, indeed, might consider themselves lucky not to have been executed off-hand, . When I First Heard of Dungeons. It was when I reached the concen- tration eamp at Afion-Kara-Hissar, in Asia Minor, that 1 first heard of the Ministry of War dungeons. Many British officers at Afion had lived in the better quarters of the prison (these "better quarters" being infin- jtely worse thgn any jail in western Europe), and several had suffered ill- treatment in the worse quarters. For example, Lieutenant-Command- er Stoker, R.N,, of Submarine E-15 (caught in the Dardanelles, while try- ing to re-enter the Sea of Marmora, where it had already carried out a number of very dafing raids) had un- dergone two periods of punishment in the Black Hole of Constantinople. The first was when, with Lieutenant Fitz- gerald, RN, he was shat in a damp underground cell, as reprisal for the falsely-reported ill-treatment of Tur- kish prisoners. After about a fort- night the two British officers were re- leased from the filthy dungeon as a result of strong protests by Mr. Mor- enthau, American Ambassador to 'urkey, In this connection I take the oppor- tunity. of mentioning the magnificent work of Mr. Morgenthau, Mr. Elkus (who succeeded him as Ambassador), and the staff of the United States Embasy in Constantinople. These gentlemen, by protests to the Turkish Government and by the distribution of money, clothes and other necessities, saved the lives of many British pris- oners in Turkey. Lieutenant-Commander Stoker's sec- ond experience of the Ministry of War was far worse than the first. With Lieutenant-Commander Cochrane, R. N.--also a submarine commander--he was sent there, as a punishment, after an unsuccessful attempt at escape. The pair, with another British officer, had slipped away from Afion- Kara-Hissar and made for the Medi- terannean coast. After walking over two hundred miles and living through the most' extraordinary adventures with brigands and Turkish villagers, they came within sight of the sen. They planned to leave the country b: commandeexing one of the small eraft which they saw from afar, in a creek. Then, almost at their journey's end, they were retaken, owing in the first place to--a goat. Their stock of food was eaten, and wanting to avoid the publicity of transactions in a village bazaar, they bought a goat from a shepherd whom they met on a hillside. J Copyright, 1919, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. V:-THE BLACK HOLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE darme. Details of the buyers' appear- ance and location, as given = the shepherd, led finally to their recap- ture, soon after they had killed tne goat for food. } Having been taken to Constantin- ople they were flung into one of the worst dungeons in the Ministry of War prison. They would be kept there indefinitely, said the military authorities, unless they gave parole not to attempt another eseape. As British officers they very naturally refused; and they remained in the dreadful cell for nearly ten months, growing even thinner and weaker, until special sanction for the required parole was sent to them, through the American Embassy, by the British Admiralty, When they returned to Afion-Kara- Hissar, they were in shocking condi tion, and it is probable that a few more weeks in the Black Hole would have killed them. Two years later Licutenant.Com- manders Cochrane and Stoker with- drew their parole, and in consequence Lwere moved to Yozard, an even more inaccessible town than Afion-Kara- Hissar. In 1918 Cochrane, with sey- eral other officers, made another bid for freedom, and this time succeeded. He escaped from Turkey at about the same period I did. h As a rule newly-captured officers were sent first of all to the Ministry of War prison, so that they might be hardy for interrogation. - Although three aviators were onee forgotten in the prison for three months, most of the recently-taken people only re mained for about a fortnight before being transferred to an interment better than those of political offend- ers or of officers who had tried to escape the total lack of exercise, and suffered from the vermin that infested the whole of the prison. One night two Britishers, unable to sleep because of the bugs, got up and sidw several hundred of the little ved brutes that the lower class Turk accepts as a matter of course. "They Po No Harm." i Useless to complain of the vermin when the Prison Governor paid a visit of inspection. "Bugs?" was the invariable reply, with an affection of surprise. "Bugs at the Ministry? You must be mis~ Whereupon the prisoners would complain of sleepless pights, and as a proof would dig out' some of the Yet even they sickened fromm +} Yeats-Brown disagreeable insects from their day- time hiding places. "Well, well," the Turk would say,! "they do no harm, Often they are use-| ful in drawing bad blood from a man's' body. Since you dislike them the room| shall be disinfected tomorrow." But in Turkey, move than anywhere; "omorrow never comes"; and never a room in the Ministry of War was dis- infected. . taken. I never heard of*such a thing." | be: ty of War." Fulton and Stone were unlucky enough to be dragged to that very+4fi§son a few weeks later; but Captain White and I did not meet them there. » Yeats-Brown Goes To The Black Hole. Captain Yeats-Brown, also, was eventually captured and sent to the Black Hole at a time when White and I were hiding in Constantinople. His new imprisonment. did not last long, for one night he and Paul succeeded in escaping vnce again, this time from the fortress itself. 'Fhey remained at liberty in the city, doing valuable pro- paganda work for the Allies, until the armistice was, signed. \ While* in the Black Hole Captain supplemented his' own bitterly-acquired knowledge of the prison conditions from poor wretches in even worse case than himself. The British and other Entente subjects formed only a small percentage of the prisoners, His fellow-captives . in- cluded all sorts and conditions of peo- ple from a Turkish prince to some of the lowest criminals on earth. "Among them was an Egyptian Mo- hammedan notability, With another Egyptian he 'had come, from Cairo (with 'permission from "the British, although without official standing) to discuss certain questions affecting the Mohammedan wold. Arrived in Constantinople the Egyptian Arabs conferred with the Turkish Grand Vizier upon Pan-Islamism and other religious matters. They found the Young Turks' point of view to be ir- reconcilable with their own and the divergenecy of opinion was too wide for any compromise. Thereupon, with the greatest apparent cordiality, they took leave of theGrand Vizier, before returning to Cairo. But they never returned to Cairo. taken to the Ministry of War. For four days they never left an under- ground cell, where they received no food. It was quite dark. It was ver- minous--that goes without saying, for no part of the Back Hole was non- verminous. 1t was also very damp, One of the Egyptians grew ill and died within a few days, of course with- out medical attention. The news of this death either appeased = Talaat Pasha's wiath or frightened him, so that the surviving Egyptian was' tuken jnipstairs, given back 'some of his luggage, and put ir one of the st rooms-of the prison, which he shared with a Turkish prince and a prison spy. It was while he was in these circumstances: that Captain Yeats-Brown: met him. | The Prince, with the eunuch who waited upon him, provided an inter- esting study. An injudicious use of his revolver, whereby. in a palace brawl one of the imperial apartments was damaged and an elderly colonel killed was the cause of his incarcera- tion. He certainly made the most of prison life. Certain privileges were his, including week-ends from the were so-called there were. punishment dens, which, so said rumor, nobody issued; and. there floor a very large room, in which fifty or more 'burkish officers 'were expiat- ing such crimes as speaking disre- spectiully of the Germans, or being seen drinking 'in a public place. Then there were the wretched cells of the more than wretched Armenians, In July, 1918, several hundred Armen- jan civilians were awaiting trial in Every day, with their heavy chains, they clanked past Cap- tain Yeats-Brown's cell on their way to "The Hall of Justice." This was a fine room, with a'lordly sweep of view over old Stamboul and the blue waters A Why 'anyone 'ever chose a building so magnificently situ- ated to be a common prison is a mys- tery. But having chosen it; there was something dramatic in. the contrast afforded by the Hall of Justice, with its beautiful views and bestial occu- pants. the prison, of the Marmora. passed amination" woman, Two Turkish officers were tators: of the scene, woman's son, aged sixteen, crawled about the room on hands and knees, dragging his chains and im- ploring first the officers, policeman weakness. who officers' In Colloboration with CAPTAIN FRANCIS YATES BROWN The Deserters In Cages. On the ground flucr were three old sheds, in which Turkish lived like animals, Déhind the bars of great wooden cago. Spies of all nationalities might be found in the underground rooms and cells. . There quarters; from ever was. on the to] "Where prospect pleases and only man is vile."--Very vile were the men who sat in that "Hall of Justice" and spent their days in flogging and tor- turing the heavily-chained Armenians who were brought before them. Captain Yeats-Brown's cell looked across a courtyard into the windows They were seized, handeaffed and »of this chamber of horrors, Generally + the blinds were down, and only faint screams told of the therein. infamies Even now, he drinks, deserters that But once the blinds were left up, and for about a quarter of an hour, until he could bear it no longer and made a tutile att to-foree his way out of his cell, British officer watched the "cross ex- of an old ' Armenian on spec- So was the old This lad then the was beating his mother to have mercy on her age and The woman was with a stick as thick as a man's wrist until she fell down and fainted. She was then kicked in the face and prod- ded with a: stick until she arose. From the position, in which Cap- tain: Yeats-Brown_ observer of this scene was placed, he could heur noth- ing but the muffled sound of -moan- ing, although the gestures and ex- pressions of everyone in the room were terribly graphic. aten PRISON IN THE WORLD THE MOST DREADFUL coin, the peasant showed it to a gen- old man, See you soon in the Minis- ful to Captain Yeats-Brown and other prisoners by smuggling notes to their triends, and buying cigars, patience cards, novelties and other forbidden luxuries. "Why were you sput 'in chains and sent down here 7 : "1 tried to send a mote out of pri- son. If I had had morey I could have bribed 'them, but as ft" is--unto him that hath not shall be taken away even that which He hath'!" And he spread his hands in cheer- ful resignation to a fate which ex- cept for the prospect of peace, would have been worse than death. All the prisoners' lived 'on hope-- and loot. When he first arved, they all crowded, eagerly around Captain Yeats- Brown, clamoring for, news and cigarettes. The news 'he could give them was good; but they had been so often "disappointed 'that! they un- doubtedly preferred the more tangible cigarettes. Everything that one could Hot actually hold onte was loot- ed. ines than no tine. Morals there were - none; and, tr devils! © who could blame them living down there, where they got no news, no tobacco, and scarcely any food, and where from the outside nothing could be heard but' the 'cries of 'heated meni and 'the dull sounds' of 'bastinado on flesh ? The. days in ithe lower. part of the prison were terribly dull,'but not so dull "as" 'the solitary © confinement to which Captain' Yeats-Brown ' was transferred... From the company 'of those cheerful scoundrels, he was sud- denly remoyed to the upstairs regions. and lived in the "luxury" of which the Greek had spoken. There he existed for a month' without exercise, and alv lowed: to speak to.no ome. The enly occupants of this pew room, bescides himself, were the little things which crawled ahd hopped. These proved in the long run, to be amenable to Keat- ings, of 'which the Prince's eunuch smuggled in a supply. Intriguing from time to time with the Prince and his attendant, gossip- ing furtively to the Egyptian nobility when sentries had been: bribed into acquiescence, and cluding the machi- nations of the prison spy were his sole distractions. e For the rest, things were desper- ately dull. Captain Yeats-Brown, like others of us who suffered soli tary confinement, played for hours at a time with a bit of string, and in-. vented all sorts' of games with matehes. "Thinking was to be avoided at all costs, for too much of it in solitary confinement is a danger to sanity, The great difficulty, espec- from racing. In this respect the ver- min weré useful for 'they proved: a gentle mental and physical exercise. From my own experience at Naza- reth, and from the éxperiénces of other officers, I am serious of opin fon that solitary confinement, with- out hooks or writing materials, is one of the worst tortuves a civilized man can be, madé to endure, It doesn't sound so bud, but try it for just a week! Left alone -and with nothing to distract his brain, the lonely pris- oner can do little but think and think and think, and all his thougl.is are ially at night, is to stop one's brain \ torture of the Armenian woman, and for many hundreds of similar brutali- ties, been punished? Probably not, for when they saw that the game was up few of the gang that dominated Turkey stayed to face the consequen- ces of their violence. Enver Pasha is hiding somewhere in the Causasus. Djevad Bey has also: dis ared: As for the lessér brutes who 'were the actual torturers, acting under orders, most, of them scurried away and don- ned civilian clothed. Many, I should imagine,' are now peaceful citizens of Constantinople, obtaining food from the Allied 'Relief : Commission Crs, But, in Heaven's name, let us see to it "once and for all, that the Turk shall never again be in a positidn to commit such horrors. ; Cunning, cruel; savage, 'and with no culture of "his own, he knows no control except fedr. For more than a century he has thrown dust-in' the eyes of civilized' Europe, playing off one country against another, and tak ing full advantage of whatever inter- national forniulae "happened to be. the order of the day. He is totally unfit 10 govern even. If." He' mas- sacres hundreds (of thousands of his n subjects--as in h The days of Abdil Hamid, the Red Sultan. Fae- trol, and foria time he doe but only 'heeausé Mtemative, natignal extinction. Then. when he thinks he can th all interna- Ht Pe Mit eh ence; as hap g the war, when the enlightened. "Com- mittee of Union and Progress" order- ed the massacre of nearly a million Armenians, and instigated the tures of the Black Hole of Cons nople--tortures which were dup cated in every jail all over Turkey. Even now the present Sultan his advisers are playing the old, ol me of throwing dust in the eyes 'esterners. They are the sheep, th: claim, while the wicked Young Tu politicians are the goats--just as 1908 the Young Turks were the she and Abdul Hamid's party the goa Inspired by fear they are even han ing and imprisoning members of ti regime that ended with the armi$ tice, as a sop to the world- # mand for jus.ice. : § { Secure in the fact that Washinetan ix: five thousand. miles distant from Constantinople, they are playing on in their plea for another chance as an independent em- pire. Give them another chance and sooner or later their degenerate in- stincts, inborn cruelty and uncultured 'savagery will réturn to the surface, and re will be a recurrence of of Constantinople' was one example American ide: many In. Heaven's name, let us see to once 'and for all, that the Turk never aghin be in a position to such horrors. ee! ted | from the authositics snough them alive, a : they did not--in which , case they either died or depended on © private means or the help 'of friends. say$, the memory of that savage pan- tomime sometimes holds sleep at arm's' length. at In this deal they made a serious mis- take. The price was one Turkish pound which they paid in gold instead of in silver. Roused from his habitual s pidity by the unusual sight of a gol) This governor of the prison was Djevad Bey, Military Commandant»of Constantinople, and one of Enver Pasha's pet puppets. He was an im- pressive-looking brute, with his glit- tering uniform and heavy moustache Always he smoked 'his cigarettes through a lengthy amber holder, He, more than anyone, 'was responsible for the sufferings of prisoners. Both the officer commanding the jail and the officer of the guards were fair minded people enough, when not act- ing under his direct influence, ith his cigarette holder and long, shiny boots, he would swagger round the prison, followed by a clanking staff. Sanitary arrangements were practically nil, washing water was at a premium. Dirt, if not disease, was in every room. But Djevad Bey "cared for none of these things." "What more do you want?" he ask- ed a British officer Who complained. "Looking across the Bosphorus, from the garden, you have one of the most beautiful views in Europe." a& put 1 am not allowed into the gar- ft i es six me or more. . Few E wi RE he would leave with a conde- : Lone XD lad ir he Me y ing smile, to inspect some of er section of his miserable n fe. bitter, And if one has recently seen dreadful' sights---such as!the torture of 'the old Armenian woman by Cap- tain Yeats-Brown---one lives of neces- sity in a state of mental nightmare. Hopes of escape or release, and of vitimate punishment of the fiends re- nsibje for the horrors of the Black § Hole of Constantinople, were all that| A sure sign that you don't know made the dreadful lif, ife worth living. much §s to think that you know #t rid the place of.its vermin or scour | ' Have the fiends responsible for the' all. it of its tain® of disdhse and death. Come, with me on a visit to this in- ' ferns of the damned, as it was less 8 [ODAYTINE JSTOR ; : Ministry, 30 that his punisiiment was little more than a rest cure. The sen- tries always stood at atténtion when he passed. Almost the same deference was ex- tended to his eunuch, for eunuchs in Turkey may' rise to great positions. . The keeper of the Imperial Harem; in fact, ranks, after the Sheikh-ul« fslam, as the highest dignitary of the realm. No eunuch, therefore, is nigli- wible ,since any of their limi num- her' may rise to this rank. The little Lord Chamberlain in 'posse who at- tended the Prince was himself use- ~~~ rR. What a beautiful world this would be if flowers only grew to resemble their pictures in the seed catalogue. The chronic borrower hopes the he'll not meet any of his creditors in heaven. : 3 A Visit to the Prison. A. fire would. be the cleanest thing that could happen to the Ministry of War peison at «Constantinople. Not all ; perfumes of Arabia, not all the disinfectonts of the world, could A SL, N WITHOUT ER CROSS" Any Tablet Offered as Aspirin and Not Stamped with the "Bayer Cross" is Not Aspirin at Al! "Bayer" Now Made in Canada--No German Interest--All Rights Purchased from than a year ago. We go downstairs into the dark- ness. A sentry leads us al the corridor to an: iron portal, ist like that of which Dante wrote: "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate" ("Aban- don all hope, ye who enter here" eS We are in a long, low yoom, air! ilit, flthy with tomato -skins un bits 3F Drea fe i po ip ? among the garbage. ed prisoners, | | mostly Greeks A i 5 YOULL LAUGH! CORNS LIFT OFF Doein't hurt 46 al 'and cists l ent" "Have a lictle patience, my Iti v crowded with older omarion i But a fortnight's pe :