SHER BAHADUR KHAN was a Punjabi Musalman fighting in France in the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade. The letter below, originally written in Urdu transcribed by the Censor of the Indian Mails, was written to Raja Gul Nawaz Khan in Jhelam, India.
[9th January 1916]
I have seen strange things in France. The French are sympathetic and gracious people. Some time ago we were established for about three months in a village. The house in which I was billeted was the house of a well-to-do man, but the only occupant was the lady of the house, and she was advanced in years. Her three sons had gone to the war. One had been killed, another had been wounded and was in hospital, and the third was at that time in the trenches. There is no doubt that the lady was much attached to her sons. There are miles of difference between women of India and the women of this country. During the whole three months, I never once saw this old lady sitting idle, although she belonged to a high family. Indeed during the whole three months she ministered to me to such an extent that I cannot adequately describe her kindness. Of her own free will she washed my clothes, arranged my bed, polished my boots for three months. She used to wash down my bedroom daily with warm water. Every morning she used to prepare and give me a tray with bread, butter, milk and coffee. I was continually wishing to find a way to reimburse her the expense; but however much I pressed her, she declined. When we had to leave that village the old lady wept on my shoulder. Strange that I had never seen her weeping for her dead son and yet she should weep for me. Moreover, at parting she pressed on me a five-franc note to meet my expenses en route.
ERNST TOLLER (1893-1939) was a German-Jewish playwright. When war broke out he joined the German Army but was later imprisoned for his part in organising a munition workers’ strike. He ended the war a socialist and a pacifist and six years after the publication of I Was a German: An Autobiography (1933) he committed suicide. The extracts below are from ‘At the Front’ and ‘The Military Prison’.
And suddenly, like light in the darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.
A dead man.
Not a dead Frenchman.
Not a dead German.
A dead man.
The barred window divided the eternal grey of the winter sky into little gloomy squares. If I pulled myself up to the sill I could see on the other side of the courtyard the white court-martial house, where the uniformed curtailers of the rights of man measured out grey prison years. The ground-floor window had friendly white curtains. The porter lived there. And once, at one of the windows, two hands parted the curtains and a girl looked out curiously at the courtyard. Our eyes met, and her head disappeared, but the gentle agitation of the curtains betrayed her presence.
The next day at the same time I was again at my grating, and the girl was again at her window; every day at the same hour the friendly ritual was repeated. When the sentries approached and danger threatened she waved to me; she invented a language of expressive gestures; her smiles and glances were the vowels, her hands and shoulders the consonants.
Then one evening the bolt clashed back in the door of my cell, and the warder called me by name.
‘Am I to be taken to another prison?’ I asked.
‘Out you get!’ he snapped.
I followed him along the corridor and into his office.
And there, under the warm gaslight, was the girl of the window, leaning on the table. I stared at her uncomprehendingly; a wave of colour swept her cheeks and she lowered her eyes in confusion.
I was bewildered and apprehensive.
Apparently the porter’s daughter was a friend of this warder, and knew, as everybody in the neighbourhood knew, that the military prison was being used for political prisoners – romantic adventurers, twentieth-century Robin Hoods who robbed the rich to help the poor, fools who preached peace when the nations were at war, and when even the priests had declared that God with His angel hosts watched over our army; the sort of people, in short, one reads about in newspapers; dangerous people, interesting people.
And so this girl had determined to see one of these fascinating creatures for herself. When she asked her lover, however, to smuggle her secretly into the prison he simply laughed at her. But the next evening, when he climbed up to her room as usual, he found the shutters of the windows barred; there was no answer when he knocked. Raging inwardly, he had to give it up, for he could already hear voices in her parents’ bedroom.
‘Why didn’t you let me in last night, Marie?’ he asked next day.
‘Because I didn’t want to.’
‘Can I come to-night?’
‘Yes, if you show me one of those poor men.’
He offered no more resistance. On the following Sunday he was on duty, with nobody else in the office. The military guard he bribed with cigarettes. And thus it was that I found myself face to face with my girl.
‘Well, there is your man,’ said the warder. ‘And now I hope you’re satisfied.’
He sat down at the table, took out a mouth-organ from his pocket and began to play it, up and down, up and down.
‘If you’re going to play, we may as well dance,’ I said.
‘None of your lip!’ he said.
‘Go on playing,’ said the girl.
The warder thought of the barred bedroom window, gave a wry smile, and started up a waltz.
‘May I have the honour?’
‘Thank you,’ said the girl. And we danced round the table to the music of the warder’s mouth organ; when we came to the wall where the chains and fetters and handcuffs were hanging I kicked out at them, and we danced on to the accompaniment of their metallic clashing.
Suddenly the music broke off; the warder turned and listened intently.
‘Aren’t you going to play any more?’ the girl asked threateningly.
‘Shut up, you silly fool! The boss is coming. This’ll cost me my job! Into your cell, you!’ And turning to the girl: ‘You too!’
He pushed me out of the room, and I ran back to my cell, the girl following; the moment the door closed behind us she fell into my arms and we kissed. But the warder was soon with us again.
‘False alarm. Come on out of there! That’ll do for to-day.’
ROSA LUXEMBURG (1871–1919) was a revolutionary socialist, theorist and letter writer, born in Poland but living much of her life in Germany. She founded the radical left-wing Spartacus League with Karl Liebknecht (she is writing to his wife in the letters below). Luxemburg was imprisoned for her agitation against the war. She and Karl Liebknecht were rearrested and assassinated on 15 January 1919 by the Freikorps, a paramilitary organisation seeking to quash the Spartacist uprising. Luxemburg’s body was thrown into the Landwehr canal in Berlin.
Breslau, Mid-November, 1917.
My beloved Sonichka,
I hope soon to have a chance of sending you this letter at long last, so I hasten to take up my pen. For how long a time I have been forced to forbear my habit of talking to you – on paper at least. I am allowed to write so few letters, and I had to save up my chances for Hans. D. [Dr Hans Dieffenbach, a friend killed in the war] who was expecting to hear from me. But now all is over. My last two letters to him were addressed to a dead man, and one has already been returned to me. His loss still seems incredible. But enough of this. I prefer to consider such matters in solitude. It only annoys me beyond expression when people try, as N. tried, ‘to break the news’ to me, and to make a parade of their own grief by way of ‘consolation’. Why should my closest friends understand me so little and hold me so cheaply as to be unable to realise that the best way in such cases is to say quickly, briefly, and simply: ‘He is dead’?
…How I deplore the loss of all these months and years in which we might have had so many joyful hours together, notwithstanding all the horrors that are going on throughout the world. Do you know, Sonichka, the longer it lasts, and the more the infamy and mons
trosity of the daily happenings surpasses all bounds, the more tranquil and more confident becomes my personal outlook. I say to myself that it is absurd to apply moral standards to the great elemental forces that manifest themselves in a hurricane, a flood, or an eclipse of the sun. We have to accept them simply as data for investigation, as subjects of study.
Manifestly, objectively considered, these are the only possible lines along which history can move, and we must follow the movement without losing sight of the main trend. I have the feeling that all this moral filth through which we are wading, this huge madhouse in which we live, may all of a sudden, between one day and the next, be transformed into its very opposite, as if by the stroke of a magician’s wand; may become something stupendously great and heroic; must inevitably be so transformed, if only the war lasts a few years longer… Read Anatole France’s Les dieux ont soif. My main reason for admiring this work so much is because the author, with the insight of genius into all that is universally human, seems to say to us: ‘Behold, out of these petty personalities, out of these trivial commonplaces, arise, when the hour is ripe, the most titanic events and the most monumental gestures of history.’ We have to take everything as it comes both in social life and in private life; to accept what happens, tranquilly, comprehensively, and with a smile. I feel absolutely convinced that things will take the right turn when the war ends, or not long afterwards; but obviously we have first to pass through a period of terrible human suffering.
[…]
Your Rosa
Breslau, Mid December, 1917.
Karl has been in Luckau prison for a year now. I have been thinking of that so often this month and of how it is just a year since you came to see me at Wronke, and gave me that lovely Christmas tree. This time I arranged to get one here, but they have brought me such a shabby little tree, with some of its branches broken off – there’s no comparison between it and yours. I’m sure I don’t know how I shall manage to fix all the eight candles that I have got for it. This is my third Christmas under lock and key, but you needn’t take it to heart. I am as tranquil and cheerful as ever. Last night I lay awake for a long time. I have to go to bed at ten, but can never get to sleep before one in the morning, so I lie in the dark, pondering many things. Last night my thoughts ran thiswise: ‘How strange it is that I am always in a sort of joyful intoxication, though without sufficient cause. Here I am lying in a dark cell upon a mattress hard as stone; the building has its usual churchyard quiet, so that one might as well be already entombed; through the window there falls across the bed a glint of light from the lamp which burns all night in front of the prison. At intervals I can hear faintly in the distance the noise of a passing train or close at hand the dry cough of the prison guard as in his heavy boots, he takes a few slow strides to stretch his limbs. The gride of the gravel beneath his feet has so hopeless a sound that all the weariness and futility of existence seems to be radiated thereby into the damp and gloomy night. I lie here alone and in silence, enveloped in the manifold black wrappings of darkness, tedium, unfreedom, and winter – and yet my heart beats with an immeasurable and incomprehensible inner joy, just as if I were moving in the brilliant sunshine across a flowery mead. And in the darkness I smile at life, as if I were the possessor of charm which would enable me to transform all that is evil and tragical into serenity and happiness. But when I search my mind for the cause of this joy, I find there is no cause, and can only laugh at myself.’ – I believe that the key to the riddle is simply life itself, this deep darkness of night is soft and beautiful as velvet, if only one looks at it in the right way. The gride of the damp gravel beneath the slow and heavy tread of the prison guard is likewise a lovely little song of life – for one who has ears to hear. At such moments I think of you, and would that I could hand over this magic key to you also. Then, at all times and in all places, you would be able to see the beauty, and the joy of life; then you also could live in the sweet intoxication, and make your way across a flowery mead. Do not think that I am offering you imaginary joys, or that I am preaching asceticism. I want you to taste all the real pleasures of the senses. My one desire is to give you in addition my inexhaustible sense of inward bliss. Could I do so, I should be at ease about you, knowing that in your passage through life you were clad in a star-bespangled cloak which would protect you from everything petty, trivial, or harassing.
[…]
Write soon, darling Sonichka.
Your Rosa
Never mind, my Sonyusha, you must be calm and happy all the same. Such is life, and we have to take it as it is, valiantly, heads erect, smiling ever – despite all.
EDWARD WILLIAMSON MASON was imprisoned several times during the war for his resistance to joining the army (conscription was introduced in 1916); he also refused alternative service. He served his first sentence at Durham Prison. He sent the letter below, written on 14 December 1916, from the army camp at Catterick. Mason was born in London, and left school at fourteen to work in a tailor’s shop. He met Henry Litchfield Woods, to whom most of his letters were addressed, in an East End Socialist hall. The letter below was published in the 1918 volume Made Free in Prison.
CATTERICK,
Thursday, 14th December.
If you look with the eye of faith over the portal of the huge gates at Wormwood Scrubs, you will see a message written up for all prisoners of conscience about to enter into the silence. The message is obscurely written for the ordinary criminal, he always reads it as – ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ But to the prisoner of conscience the message is pikestaff clear, and he reads – ‘Abound in hope, all ye who enter here.’ That is what he reads if his heart is full of faith and courage and void of all repining and regret. I must admit that when I first saw the message I misread it, and entered the portal as an ordinary criminal, but I have since discovered my error, and when I see the scroll in a few days’ time I shall read it aright.
Dante saw the first legend written above the gates of Hell. Many people think prison is Hell, and so it is if you like to allow it to be so. Believe me, dear friend, it is so no more to me.
I have made my plans for living in Wormwood Scrubs and am ready for anything. I believe I shall gradually become absorbed in a deep tranquillity. To many, prison is a gnawing monotony, a corroding silence that preys upon the heart. To explore your own mind day after day, week after week, month after month, to hear your own thoughts reverberating in the empty silence of your weary brain, what horror! But that horror can be exorcised by calm meditation, books, poetry, and a cheerful and hopeful resolution.
If our militarists could realise what formidable and relentless men they are forging, I think the absolutists would be released. A man who has withstood imprisonment for his principles is not going to relapse into lethargy after his release. After the War we will renew the war. At present we are in our dug-outs (cells) and trenches (prisons), undergoing a bombardment of two-year shells and alternative service bombs, but it is surprising how few casualties are sustained. At first the alternative service bombs did a great deal of damage, but now I believe the lads are getting over the shock. The enemy is dismayed at his two-year shells doing so little damage to our morale. Beneath their impact our temper is being strengthened, and when we can resume active hostilities our élan will be irresistible.
Remember that, our separation apart, I shall suffer not at all. I want to assure you most firmly that all will be well with me.
CIVILIAN PRISONERS AT KNOCKALOE Swiss physician Adolf Lukas Vischer (1884–1974) quoted the testimonies below in his study Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (1919). The book consists of his reflections and research into the impact of imprisonment on the mind of the prisoner of war. He was interested in how their situation, and consequent psychological health, differed from that of those in ‘ordinary’ prisons. Below are two extracts he reproduces from Lager-Echo, a Journal of the Civilian Prisoners’ Camp at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man.
We live in
a kingdom of thorns, and the points that prick us on all sides are to us like a nightmare. Do you imagine that these thorny obstacles that hem us in on all sides are soothing to our spirits? Make the experiment, and imagine a picture of a man pointing a formidable revolver at you in such a way that from whatever angle you look at the picture, you stare down the black muzzle. Hang up this picture in your sitting room, a copy of it in your bedroom, and another in your office. At the end of twenty-four hours you will take a hatchet and give that man such a blow that, dumbfounded, he will drop the murderous weapon. Three times you will strike, and then you will sweep up the fragments and cast them on the rubbish-heap. Physically, the prisoner is powerless. But in spirit he gnaws unceasingly at the roots of the thorny hedge.
(Lager-Echo, Knockaloe, No. 7, 18 August 1917)
There are many things of which we can see and hear too much, but most of all our dear companions. In despair, thousands of us have wished ourselves far away on a mountain top. Solitude! Music of the spheres for a prisoner of war who has dragged out two or three years amidst a swarm of men, behind double rows of wire-fencing. Oh! only to be out of this crowded desert. Just for ten minutes to be on a solitary storm-tossed mountain top, on the chilliest glacier, in a mad whirlwind – anywhere, even where danger lies, to get away from the sight and sound and smell of mankind, and to be able to think one’s thoughts. Here it is like an ant-heap (a nest of termites, as [Gaston] Riou calls it), a hive of bees… This long period of the closet contact finally reduces one to look on one’s companions as on the dismembered carcasses in a butcher’s shop… Our characters are now like a book that all can read, and the pages are soiled by constant handling.
(Lager-Echo, Knockaloe, No. 9, 26 September 1917)
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