/| /| /| /| /| /| T. / |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ etc.
It follows that in Turkey there are no standing orders. None, that is to say, that live long. There are files, rooms, whole houses full of dead ones. But can you call orders “standing” when they do not stand?
In a small way, this conflict between ideas of government made life troublesome for us in Turkey, and even more troublesome for the Turks. But we were a small matter. If the main facts of their history were similarly plotted as a diagram, it would be found very like my line T.: and the result is the ruination of one of the most fruitful lands on the face of the earth; the production of nothing, save only cruelty and unnaturally debased races; and the present-day collapse and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
Although we expected to hear at any moment that we were to pack up and go to Afion, the date of our departure continued to recede. We really had some things to pack now. It is extraordinary how quickly things accumulate, even in prison. We were all anxious to go, especially the skipper, who thought Afion would not be so difficult to escape from. He was always thinking of escape, and at last did get clear away, but not until the latter half of 1918. The account of that truly great and successful adventure has been written in _Blackwood’s Magazine_.
Personally I had given up the idea; my continual bad health had forced me to abandon all hope of escape.
In Turkey all moves happen as did our move to Afion. You are told that you will go, and nothing happens. Having been lied to consistently on all possible occasions, after a time you conclude that this is just one more lie. Then, quite suddenly, you are told that you are to go now at once. Hastily you pack up, sell off what you can, take what you can of the rest with you, and go. At the other end you find that nobody expects you at all. Either they have never been informed that you are coming; or they have been informed of it so long ago that they have forgotten; or, most likely of all, they, too, have thought it was just one more lie.
How the dickens this people ever managed to run an empire is a holy mystery to me. I don’t believe they did. I believe that all real organisation, such as it was, has been done by Greeks, Armenians and Jews, by subject people, slaves, half-breeds and poly-breeds.