Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  No doubt Pertabr had daydreams of himself mounted on a fiery white steed at the head of conquering bands as the new liberator of India. At Delhi he would receive the homage of the native princes. He may have imbued the Kaiser with some of these ideas, though one cannot imagine that the imperial mind had any daydreams of oriental conquests in which some other man was to prance on a white horse; but however this may be, a mission did start for Kabul, headed by ‘Prince’ Pertabr with three German officers and several released Indian prisoners of war, to raise the Amir against India. They passed through Constantinople during the first week of September and then they disappeared into space. It was learned afterwards that they got no farther than Afghanistan and that the fragments of the mission were reported many months later to be wandering as homeless outcasts about Central Asia.

  That was not the end of the German attempts upon India. Some few months later there came into our hands an autograph letter addressed by the Kaiser to the ruling princes in India, which had been photographed down to a size little exceeding that of a postage stamp and enclosed in a tiny tube to be concealed about the body. The belief in German circles was that Persia was about to rise on the side of Germany and that that would be the signal for the invasion of India by the Afghans.

  The headquarters of the Indian conspirators who were being manipulated by the Germans in America were at Berkeley, California. It was there that the Ghadr newspaper was printed in the vernacular and arrangements were made for shipping arms to India at the German expense. It took many months to convince the Californian police authorities that there were ample grounds for taking action under the neutrality laws, but when they did move they moved to some purpose. The two Indian leaders were arrested. When they were brought to trial one of them, convinced from the intimate knowledge of his secret activities disclosed by the prosecution that the other had turned informer, slipped a pistol from his pocket and shot his companion in open court. But in the western states such incidents do not disturb the presence of mind of Assize Court officials: the deputy-sheriff whipped an automatic from his pocket and from his elevated place at the back of the court, aiming above and between the intervening heads, shot the murderer dead. And so, in less than ten seconds the sentence which the judge was about to pronounce was more than executed.

  The Germans are not naturally fitted to acquire an influence over Orientals, though they have tried hard to do it. The Kaiser, who was a master of pantomimic display, rode into Jerusalem properly clad as a new Crusader. He conformed to such oriental customs as were considered compatible with his dignity and he was getting on quite well until some vulgar-minded non-German Europeans set the natives laughing at him. Ridicule kills more surely than the assassin’s knife.

  I remember a rather pompous proconsul who was determined to impress the natives of the Pacific Islands by stage-management. He happened to be a Doctor of Law at Cambridge and, in addition to his gilded Civil Service uniform, he arrayed himself in the scarlet robe of a Doctor of Law and stalked solemnly under the palm-trees with two little native boys carrying his train. The natives had never seen anything quite so gorgeous and all went well until the procession had to pass a store kept by a certain ribald Englishman with an extensive knowledge of the vernacular. It was enough for him to utter one phrase in the native language to scatter all the official pomp to the four winds. The comment ran down the whispering gallery to the farthest recesses of the island and, instead of the awed hush on which the proconsul had counted, he was received with broad and rather pitying smiles. That finished any prestige that he might have had in this particular group.

  It was so once with a French naval post-captain who determined to overawe the natives with a display of naval force. To this end he landed a considerable force of bluejackets and began to drill them on shore. He had a peculiar strut in his walk which fired the imagination of a small native boy who had been born lacking in a sense of reverence. As the captain marched proudly at the head of his men he became conscious that there was something about him which was provoking roars of merriment among the spectators. He began furtively to pat various parts of his anatomy to see whether there had been a mishap to his clothing and it was not for some time that he realised that just behind him was a small boy caricaturing his every movement. That little episode settled the French question.

  But I am wandering far from my subject, which was German intrigues in the Orient. Some little time before the war German agents had made great play with the tribes in the hinterland of Tripoli and when war was declared they did succeed in producing in the Senussi a hostile spirit against the Allies. In 1916 an English ship of war, the Tara, was sunk by a submarine off the north African coast. As usual, the German commander made no attempt to save the crew, but officers and men to the number of about a hundred did succeed in getting ashore. They found themselves in an inhospitable sandy desert, with nothing but what they stood up in and with no means of communicating with the outside world. For all that was known, the ship had been sunk with all hands.

  The first step, of course, was to get something to eat and drink. A little way inland they found a well, but there was a dead camel in it. At first they thought that the death of the camel might have been recent and they hauled him up with the idea of eating him, but the first cut with a knife was enough and they left him where he was and yet forty-eight hours later some of them were glad to eat of this loathsome food, or go under.

  Very soon after their landing they fell into the hands of Senussi Arabs, who gave them almost nothing to eat and insisted upon their marching inland under the pitiless sun half dead with hunger and thirst. At last they reached a little village presided over by what they took to be a Mohammedan priest, but the bluejackets nicknamed him ‘Holy Joe’.

  ‘Holy Joe’ was a holy terror. He drove these wretched men out in the morning under the lash to till his fields and he gave them next to nothing to eat. Fortunately, the desert in these parts grew snails – great grey-shelled monsters – in prodigious numbers and it was part of the routine to bring in from the fields a quota of these snails for the evening meal. The cook became quite expert in the management of snails. There was no lid to the pot and there was not enough fuel to bring the water to the boil before putting in his snails, so he put them in cold and poured water upon them, or what passed for water in these parts and lighted the fire. As the pot warmed up, the snails, not unnaturally, tried to get out and the cook had to spend his time in heading them back again. When the evening meal was ready the snails had left their shells and lay in a muddy and unappetising mass at the bottom of the soup. That is what our wretched men had to live upon for months and as time wore on the hunting-grounds were farther afield. They had eaten all the snails for furlongs round the plantations.

  Once the commander made an attempt to escape in order to report the existence of the prisoners to someone who would communicate with Egypt, but he failed. He had, however, written appeals to the Turkish authorities for more food and it was through one of these appeals that deliverance came.

  Everyone remembers the fine exploit of the Duke of Westminster with his fleet of armoured cars – how he scattered a Turkish Army and how he carried terror into the hearts of the tribesmen. Now it chanced that on the evening of the action some of his men discovered a derelict car and searched it and that, in the course of the search, they lighted upon a dirty piece of paper and brought it in to the Duke. It was actually one of the commander’s appeals and it gave the name of the village. Thus, for the first time certain rumours that British prisoners were detained by the Senussi were confirmed. But now came a fresh difficulty. No one knew where the village was. It was not marked in any of the maps and one could not scour the desert in every direction to find what might be a mythical village. Inquiries were made of the Turkish prisoners and at last one was found who had heard of the village. In fact, his father had once taken him there when he was a little boy, but all he remembered of it was that on the hill above it there was a single date-tree and u
nder the date-tree an ancient stone well. He thought that it lay in the direction to which he pointed.

  This prisoner was taken up on one of the light cars as a guide. For many hours they ploughed the sand and then there was a council of war. They had petrol not much more than sufficient for the return journey.

  If they went any farther they might have to leave the car behind them, but the Duke would not turn back. Whatever happened, he meant to find this village and to rescue the prisoners and so they went on and a very few minutes later the guide uttered a loud cry, sprang from the car and lay grovelling in the sand. ‘An ambush!’ every one said and they covered him with their rifles in order that, if any had to die, he should be the first, but it was no ambush. With keener sight than theirs he had spied the single date-palm. They took him up again and drove to the palm. He jumped down and dug at the sand like a dog, until he disclosed the coping of an ancient well and a few yards farther on they came in sight of the village.

  The company of prisoners were just sitting down to discuss their evening snails when a bluejacket came in breathless to say that he had seen a ‘blinking motorcar’. Either he was pulling their legs or he had a touch of the sun and in either case the best treatment was to throw stones at him, which they did, but he persisted and at last a few of them broke away from the circle to reconnoitre. There, sure enough, in the slanting rays of the sun was a car. They ran towards it hailing it as loudly as they could and those in the car itself, seeing a party of gaunt and vociferous natives almost naked in their rags, were for keeping them at a safe distance. It was not until they recognised the English language that they knew they were fellow countrymen.

  Normally, the story stops there, but a bluejacket who was one of the party added a little postscript of his own. Before they left the village there was a little account to settle – a little matter of account with ‘Holy Joe’, who had wielded the whip over them all these months. He winked and he nodded and he would say no more, but it was gathered that ‘Holy Joe’ did not go out of this world with a smile upon his face.

  The Germans were as busy with the Moors as they were with the Arabs and their efforts were quite as ineffective. It must have been uphill work in Morocco for the German agent. There was one who had brought the Sus tribes almost up to the point of rising, but they stipulated for arms. Otherwise they would throw in their lot against Germany. There was nothing for it but to tell them that arms had been written for and that they might be expected by ship at any moment. With such promises the Germans managed to keep up the spirit of expectation until one day the lights of a steamer were seen approaching. Evidently this was the long-promised vessel. The whole tribe turned out upon the beach to assist in landing the cargo, but suddenly a dazzling beam shot out from the vessel, illuminating the whole of the foreshore. It was a French warship and in another moment a shell from one of the guns landed right in the middle of the village. So that was the kind of lie on which the German agent was feeding them! There were whispered consultations. No one knows except the German agent, who is not now in a position to tell us, exactly what happened. One must always make subtractions from native stories, but the tale that reached Tangier was that the German was bidden to a meal at which he ate certain viands which disagreed with him, so that in the end, being a very fat man, he burst asunder and gave up his life.

  The war work of women made many friendships and a few implacable enmities. The husband of a lady of high degree came to consult me about an anonymous letter that had reached her. No threats, either actual or implied, brought it within the criminal law and, as he pointed out, the handwriting and the notepaper, as well as an obviously intimate knowledge of the lady, marked it as being the production of a person of the same class, not improbably a ‘friend’. To say that it contained home-truths would be a reckless understatement. It was the outpouring of a spirit that can endure no more. ‘You are well known,’ it said, ‘as the most disagreeable and vulgar woman in London,’ and it went on to tell her why. I could almost hear the sigh of relief as she signed herself, ‘A well-wisher’.

  No question here of a German spy nor of criminal proceedings, but mysterious documents are always fascinating and by the time the husband called again I had identified the writer beyond possibility of error as a lady of the same War Committee revolving in the same social circle as the recipient of the letter. I told the husband that the mystery was cleared up. ‘But what we want to know,’ he said, ‘is who wrote it.’ On that point I said I could not enlighten him: it was against the rules. The next day he returned with a list of his wife’s friends whose attachment to her was doubtful and asked me to say whether the list did or did not include the anonymous writer. I fear he has never forgiven me for remaining firm.

  They have curious ideas abroad about the way in which the British conduct a war. A Bulgarian who was taking leave of an English official when returning to Bulgaria said, ‘Remember, I have nothing to say about this plan of assassinating Ferdinand.’

  ‘What plan?’ asked the astonished Englishman.

  ‘Your plan. You are clearly within your rights, but I think as time goes on you will find out that Ferdinand will be more useful to you alive than dead.’

  Before Romania came into the war, a Romanian met a general of the Prussian Staff at dinner in Berlin. After dinner the general said, ‘I knew your late King. He was a fine man. What a pity the English murdered him.’ The Romanian replied that there must be some mistake: the King died in his bed. But the general brushed this aside and gave him a list of the notables in various countries who had been murdered by the English. One of them was Jaurès, the French socialist!

  In July 1915 officers returning from the Front noticed a wave of pessimism as unreasonable as the former optimism. People were just recovering from the shock of learning that Lord Kitchener had foretold that the war would last three years instead of the six months that so many had been counting upon. The cry of ‘Look at the map’ was in the mouth of constitutional pessimists in high places and if one had looked at the map instead of at the men there would have been no spirit left in any one. Fortunately, geography is not efficiently taught us at school. All we knew was that, man for man, our soldiers were better than the Germans and that if, as we were sometimes told, the winning of the war depended upon killing Germans we should win through in the end; or if, as the Germans were never tired of telling each other, it was to be a war of endurance, we felt sure that we could hold out longer than they. When a party was criticising the conduct of the war in November 1915, I remember a naval officer retorting, ‘If our Admiralty and our War Office and all our government departments had been perfect we should have lost the war long ago.’

  A little later in the war the same naval officer was examining a captured German submarine officer. The German said bitterly, ‘I cannot understand you English. If you had joined hands with us we should have dominated the world between us.’

  ‘But,’ replied the British sailor, ‘we did not want to dominate the world.’ The German appeared to feel that he understood the English less than ever.

  In the autumn of 1915 the horde of young Irishmen who were emigrating to escape military service became a scandal. The number of Irish emigrants of military age during October 1915 was 4,000. Even so, it is to be doubted whether a new regulation prescribing that no passport was to be granted to men of military age would have been passed but for the fact that the Irish stokers on a White Star liner refused to carry such emigrants and one company after another, including even two American lines, refused to allow them to come on board their ships.

  The suppression of a daily newspaper was resorted to only once during the war. On 5 November 1915, The Globe, which had helped the police more than once, published a statement that Lord Kitchener had tendered his resignation to the King, whereas, in fact, he was leaving the country on an important mission which could not at the moment be made public. On the following day a warrant was drawn up, empowering officers of the Special Branch to suppress the pap
er. As no newspaper had been suppressed in England for about a century there were no precedents on which we could work, nor was I sufficiently acquainted with the mechanical details of newspaper production to be able to instruct the officers off-hand what part of the machinery should be seized and removed. We entered the premises between five and six that evening. The machines were in full blast in the basement. Newspaper boys were hurrying in and out. The inspector showed the warrant to the manager and the machines were stopped. Going downstairs, I found a very obliging man who must have thought that I was a more or less distinguished visitor who was to be shown over the plant. I said to him, ‘Supposing that you wanted to take away some part of this machinery which would make it impossible to run the machines again until it was restored and yet do no damage to the plant, what would you take?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said and he led me to a certain engine, from which he took a portion which I could carry away in my hand. I thanked him and carried it away. That was how The Globe was suppressed until such time as the directors of the newspaper had come to an arrangement with the government.

  The restrictions on the liberty of the press were really imposed by the press itself. Proprietors and editors measured all their criticisms by one test – whether what they wished to publish would be turned to account by the enemy. Their patriotism throughout the war was whole-hearted and unquestioned.

  In 1916 an Austrian submarine stopped a steamer in the Mediterranean on which Colonel Napier and Captain Wilson were passengers. They were carrying the diplomatic bags from the legation in Athens. All but one of the bags were immediately thrown overboard, but as they contained buoyant packages insufficiently compensated by weights, one at least failed to sink and was picked up by the submarine. From the fact that the Austrians hailed the steamer and demanded the surrender of Colonel Napier by name it was clear that a spy, probably at Corfu, had given them information. Naturally there was some confusion: a lady concealed the bag that had not been thrown overboard; Colonel Napier went on board the submarine and was interned in Austria; the steamer continued her voyage to Italy.