The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 41

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 pa.s.sed 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. Konig 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 emba.s.sy 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.s.sisting 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 ident.i.ty which he had made months before. He was from Smyrna, and very little proof of his ident.i.ty 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 pet.i.tion 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 embarra.s.sing ones, I had managed to explain that the letter had been sent to Castell, c/o. the Emba.s.sy, 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 pa.s.senger.

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-cla.s.s), 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 circ.u.mspective 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, s.h.i.+pping, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 gla.s.s 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 fis.h.i.+ng once by mistake. Postas _s.h.i.+kared_ me so severely that I had little fis.h.i.+ng, 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.