We even had a little dancing on one or two occasions, and one day the commandant brought two or three Greek and Armenian ladies. This was such a success that he became very excited and declared "Next veek plenty lady kom." Life seemed to be improving all round, but it was too good to last, and suddenly everything was stopped. The commandant got into hot water with the other Turkish authorities in the town, who had probably reported him behind his back to Constantinople. Our walks were suddenly curtailed and no long walks allowed. Had the little man been able to stand up for himself, things would have been much better, but he was much too scared to take a strong line, and a few days later departed for Eski-Chehir to take the place of the commandant there, who, in turn, was to come to Kastamuni. During the winter of 1916, prices began to rise rapidly in the bazaar and this went on all through 1917, until in 1918 all prisoners had great difficulty in getting food, even in the new camps, which were said to be better off in this respect than Kastamuni. When we first arrived, there was a small amount of silver money in circulation, the smallest notes which were just being introduced being 20 and 5 piastres--3s. 4d. and 10d. in ordinary times. Not long afterwards, these were followed by 2-1/2 and 1 piastre notes, which carried pictures of the Dardanelles and Kut on the back, Kut being quite unrecognizable. For smaller change recourse had to be taken to stamps and by midsummer of 1917 no coins of any sort were to be seen. Money came through to us in various ways, but the best exchange we could get was by cashing undated cheques with the Greek shopkeepers in the town, who gave us 160 piastres to the pound, whereas through the Dutch Embassy we could only get 140, the exchange rate before the war being 112. The shopkeepers would not be able to cash these cheques till the end of the war, and it says something for the reputation of a British cheque that they would accept them on such conditions. They undoubtedly regarded such cheques as being a very much safer asset than the Turkish paper money, which was the only alternative, and, at the end of the war, would very likely be suddenly repudiated by a paternal Government. We were paid by the Turks at the rate they pay their own officers, the equivalent of this being deducted from our accounts by the War Office. On the way up from Kut we were given one month's pay in Bagdad, which for senior officers was on a comparatively generous scale. However, on reaching Kastamuni, these unfortunates were told that the Bagdad rates were quite wrong, and they were now to pay up the difference; this took several months in many cases. Happily for us, soon after our arrival, the Red Cross came to our assistance, working through the American Embassy in Constantinople. They gave us LT.3 a month, which, with a subaltern's allowance of LT.7 as pay from the Turks, made it just possible to carry on.