might once more have an equal chance of escaping. It was for this reason that we let slip the above and later opportunities to make off while on trek. Half-way to Angora we came to the village of Kalijik, where we were offered billets in the local jail, already well peopled with Turkish criminals. On our refusing this offer, we were housed for the night in an empty building on the edge of the village. We reached Angora four days after leaving Yozgad, and were accommodated in up-to-date buildings, designed by Germans as a hospital, but since used as Turkish barracks. Luckily the particular house in which we were billeted had not as yet been used by Turks. During our two days here we were allowed very fair liberty in visiting the bazaars, the shops of which, after our six months at Changri, appeared almost magnificent in the profusion of their wares. In one of these it was that Nobby espied a pair of real Goetz field-glasses. Telling his companion to lure away the 'posta " who escorted them, he entered the shop and sucoeeded purchasing the glasses, and 8 schoolboy's satchel in which to conceal them, for about £18-a tall price; and yet if the prices of other things had been in no higher proportion to their real value, living in Turkey would have been comparatively cheap. In the end these glasses were of inestimable value to our party. While we were in Angora some of us went to see Sherif Bey, whose propensity for epigram was touched upon in the opening words of our story. As second-in-command he had accompanied us in our move from Kastamoni to Changri. There he had been perpetually at loggerheads with our new, as indeed he had been with our two former commandants. Having eventually relinquished his ambition of superseding Sami Bey, he had recently accepted the less remunerative post of commandant of the British rank-and-file prisoners in the Angora district. Some of the men whom we succeeded in meeting had certain complaints to make against their previous commandant. A deputation of officers therefore waited upon his successor, who received them with a show of great friendliness, and assured them that under his benevolent sway such things as the looting of parcels would be impossible. Whether he fulfilled his promises we are not yet in a position to say: the fact remains that he treated very badly the five officers who stayed behind a few extra days for dental and medical treatment, asserting that they had only stopped in Angora with a view to escape. Moreover, there were at this very time under Sherif Bey's orders two submarine officers who had been sent from the camp at Afion-Kara-Hissar, and were to join our convoy when it went on to Yozgad. Since their arrival in Angora a week before they had been confined to the only hotel, and had not once been allowed to visit the bazaar. One of the two was Lieut.-Commander A. D. Cochrane, who was destined to play the leading rôle in the eventual escape of our particular party. The other was Lieut. Commander S- These two had, with one other naval officer, attempted to escape from the camp at Kara - Hissar, but had been recaptured when within sight of the sea: they had since spent ten months in a common Turkish jail. Lieut. Commander S-had also been the victim of reprisals under somewhat amusing circumstances. Whilst he was at Kara-Hissar, an order arrived one day ordering that two officers of high birth and closely connected with the British aristocracy should be selected and sent to Constantinople. Thereupon a list was prepared of officers related to Labour candidates, Dukes, Members of Parliament, &c. Thinking that this promised at least a jaunt to Constantinople, S—had claimed descent from the bluest blood of England. After consideration of the rival claims, he and one other were selected. Their selfcongratulations, however, were a little premature, as the Commandant now informed them that the Turkish Government, having heard that their officer prisoners in India were being badly treated, proposed taking reprisals until their powerful relations should think fit to remedy matters on both sides. In vain the unfortunate dupes protested that the report was obviously false, and asked that further inquiries should be made before reprisals were oarried into effect: the reply was that the order was Enver Pasha's, and could not be questioned, but that if they agreed to go quietly to Constantinople, they would at once be led into the presence of the Generalissimo, where they could put forward their complaint in person. To this they had perforce to agree, but on arrival in the capital were at once flung into prison, kept in solitary confinement, and fed on bread and water. In this state they remained for some three weeks, after which the Turkish authorities discovered, as was only natural, that there had not been an atom of truth in the report upon which they had acted. By way of redress, therefore, they allowed the innocent sufferers six days' absolute freedom in Constantinople, after which they were taken to their old camp. From Angora onwards we were escorted by parties of the local gendarmerie; of the Changri guard who had so far accompanied us, only a few came on with us to Yozgad, and they, ill-trained, ill-fed, and ill-clad, were rather passengers who called for our pity than guards capable of preventing us from decamping. The gendarmes were, for the most part, remarkably well mounted, and in charge of them was a benevolent old gentleman of the rank of bash-chaouse, or sergeantmajor, who was for ever holding forth upon his friendship towards the English, and his utter inability to understand why we were not fighting side by side in this war. The sergeant-major talked much to a swirling torrent of brown and us, punctuating his remarks with "Jánim,' "my dear." He was jovial, he was pleasing to look at, he was interesting. He had been through several Turkish wars, and he discussed the Great War with more intelligence than many of the Turkish officers we had met. One day as two of us were marching beside the horse he was riding, the dear old man pointed out a deep ravine some few hundred yards to our right. His face lighted up with pride of achievement and pleasant recollection. "Do you see that ravine?" he said. "Well, there I helped to massacre 5000 Armenians. Allah be praised!" The 120 mile march from Angora to Yozgad occupied eight days. As usual, we bivouacked each night in the open, on one occasion coming in for a tremendous thunderstorm. Our best day's march was one of 30 miles, and brought us down to the Kizil Irmak, better known to Greek scholars as the ancient river Halys. We camped on the western bank opposite the village of Kopru-Keui (bridgevillage), so called from the pioturesque old stone bridge which here spans the largest river in Asia Minor. We were all glad of a bathe, although this was only safe close to the bank, where the water was hardly deep enough to swim in. The rest of the river was muddy water, dashing between enormous rocks, which, as it were, protected the bridge from their fury, and so under only two of the nine arches and through the narrow gorge between high precipitous cliffs beyond, The bridge itself, with narrow and steeply-cambered roadway and pointed arches, each of different height and span, seemed almost a part with the rocky cleft it spanned. The rest of our move to Yozgad was uneventful, except for the upsetting of two carts, owing to reckless driving on the part of the Turkish jehus. On the 24th April 1918 we set out from a small village twelve miles from our destination. The way climbed gradually till we topped a high ridge. Over this we marched, swinging down the farther slope at a quioker step. The winding-road curled round spurs and valleys, and from one such spur we obtained our first sight of the town of Yozgad. Unprepossessing it looked lying in a valley surrounded by barren hills: a few poplars here and there, the usual timber-built houses, a few mosques. Four months later we looked at it for the last time. We could only see a few twinkling lights to the east in a curtain of starlit darkness, but we were well content as we turned away, for we had shaken the dust of prison from our feet. (To be continued.) THE WAR OFFICE IN WAR TIME.-II. BY MAJOR-GENERAL SIR C. E. CALLWELL, K.C.B. self uncompromisingly in fa "You cannot," Mr Lloyd Gecrge declared when ex- vour of withdrawal; Lord pounding his theory of Cabi- Kitchener thereupon left for the Egean, and nothing happened for about three weeks, But on the 23rd of November my chief, Sir A. Murray, summoned me, after a meeting of the War Council, to say that that body wished me to repair straightway to Paris and to make General Gallieni, the War Minister, acquainted with decision which they had just arrived at-viz., that the Gallipoli Peninsula was to be abandoned without further ado. The full Cabinet would meet on the morrow (the 24th) to endorse the decision. That afternoon Mr Asquith, who was acting as Secretary of State for War in the absence of Lord Kitchener, sent for me and repeated these in The question whether the Dardanelles venture was, or was not, to be proceeded with, was perpetually under discussion in Government circles structions. and at the War Office during the autumn of 1915; and from the moment when it became apparent that the large reinforcements demanded by Sir I. Hamilton could not be spared, the view of soldiers in Whitehall that evacuation was the only possible course hardened from day to day. Our rulers, however, halted between two opinions. On his taking over the command late in October, General Monro, after reviewing the situation on the spot, pronounced him I left by the morning boattrain next day, having wired to our military attaché to arrange, if possible, an interview with General Gallieni that evening; and he met me at the Gare du Nord, bearer of an invitation to dinner from the War Minister, and of a telegram from General Murray, intimating that the Cabinet, having met as arranged, had been unable to come to 8 decision, but were going to have another try on the morrow, Here was con by instructions, and for which one was not prepared, but I decided to tell General Gallieni exactly how matters stood. (Adroitly drawn out for my benefit by his personal staff during dinner, the great soldier told us that stirring tale of how, as Governor of Paris, he despatched its garrison in buses and taxis and any vehicles that he could lay hands upon, to buttress the army which, under Maunoury's stalwart leadership, was to fall upon Von Kluck's flank, and was to usher in the victory of the Marne.) tingency that was not covered four, and Lord Grey, assisted by the First Sea Lord and the C.I.G.S.), and they were leaving our army marooned on the Gallipoli Peninsula, with the winter approaching apace, in a position growing more and more precarious owing to Serbia's collapse and Bulgaria's accession to the enemy ranks having freed the great artery of communications connecting Germany with the Golden Horn. One wonders whether that edifying and eloquent memorandum to which reference was made in a former article can have had anything to do with the Cabinet's infuriating infirmity of purpose. A fresh wire came to hand from the War Office on the following afternoon, announcing that the Cabinet had again been unable to clinch the business, but contemplated a further séance two days later, the 27th. On the afternoon of the 27th, however, a message arrived from General Murray, to say that our rulers had yet again failed to make up their minds, and that the best thing I could do under the circumstances was to return to the War Office. General Gallieni, when the position of affairs was explained to him, was most sympathetic, quoted some body's dictum that "la politique n'a pas d'entrailles," and hinted that he did not always find it quite plain sailing with his own gang. Still, there it was. The TwentyThree had thrown the War Council over (it was then composed of Messrs Asquith, Bonar Law, Lloyd George, and Bal Enough to make Peel or Gladstone or the late Lord Salisbury turn in their graves, the War Cabinet plan, with its Minutes of Proceedings and its discussions in the presence of goodness knows whc, does seem preferable to the timehonoured procedure at junotures when the situation of the State requires the Powers that Be to get a move on. Politicians, when they came to be received up into the supreme council, used to take themselves and their deliberations very seriously indeed before Mr Lloyd George's iconoclastic innovations. There was an atmosphere of mystery about Cabinet meetings at the Prime Minister's house which was exceedingly impressive, and which made it all the more extraordinary in the early days of the war, that whenever the gathering by any accident made up its |