January was very cold, and we were pleased to learn, towards the end of it, that we were all to be moved to Afion-Kara-Hissar, where the other British officers were interned. We were thoroughly sick of Angora, and of being locked up. No change was to be expected under the present Army Corps Commander, who hated us as much as we hated him. And really I don’t blame him very much looking back upon it in cold blood. British prisoners are perfect brutes to manage. If they are allowed to run things themselves, they run them very well indeed, but they also run away. If they are given much liberty they walk about as if they own the place. Not out of pride or display, but just because they actually feel as if they owned it. I felt, we each felt, as though we British owned Angora. They will never, no not ever, not even if they die, feel, or seem to feel, or pretend to feel that their captors are as good men as they, let alone that they are better. Again and again we received instructions--even now I can hardly admit ever receiving “orders” of such a kind, hence “instructions”--to salute all Turkish officers whom we met in the streets. And each time those instructions were ignored. We saluted senior officers, not those of rank equivalent to our own. If, on the other hand, British prisoners are given no liberty, they continually struggle for more, and make the lives of the Turks a burthen to them. A Turkish officer of any grade always prefers to get one of a lower grade to do his work, and to attend to his interviews for him. We never acquiesced in this for one moment. If possible we raided the senior officer’s privacy. If that was not possible, we sent his junior to fetch him. And if that failed we ruined his peace of mind by continually writing letters to him. When any outside person of importance visited us we complained bitterly of all we resented, and were not afraid. Turks don’t understand that attitude at all. Their method is to give strict orders, to have those orders obeyed in semblance, and disobeyed in private, until, in the course of time the orders lapse and become obsolete. Then the senior officer awakes from his pleasant slumber, makes a lot of new orders, and goes to sleep again. In no circumstance will he remain awake, give reasonable orders, and see to it himself that they are reasonably carried out. It is difficult for the Turk to keep his mind, his will, or whatever you like to call it, firmly and steadily opposed to the wills of others, whether prisoners, or his subordinates, or subject peoples. He simply cannot do it. His method is to be unreasonably lax for a long time, and then unreasonably severe for a short time, so that the resultant line of progression may be more or less straight. Thus, diagramatically expressed, these two lines, T for Turkish and B for British, point in the same direction, but are quite different in kind: /| /| /| /| /| /| T. / |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ etc. B. ------------------- etc.