WE are an hour late, the rain is pouring in torrents as I mount from a Turk’s back to my now familiar “van”; the station is full of friends crowding to witness our start and say farewell. [Illustration: From a Turk’s Back. ] After no more than an hour of what proved to be much the worst stage of my whole journey, I was determined against any further dependence upon “goods traffic.” I should infinitely prefer to walk. Our compartment, I know, had not been chosen for comfort—there was no other to be had. But the roof leaked, the doors would not shut, it was impossible to keep our candles alight. At every few kilometres there is a halt. After an hour and a half the cheik and the officer are beyond words. Wrapped in rugs on the cold, hard floor, they are soon fast asleep, and now peacefully snoring. I should have thought myself that our continual joltings were enough to wake the dead, but my friends, fortunately, seem able to sleep on, pitched as they are every moment from side to side like long, shapeless bundles of woollen stuff. I put my umbrella up and donned a mackintosh, while our fellow-traveller, the Inspector of Forests, is no more able to sleep than I, but does his best to relieve the monotony by smiling at me (since we have no common language) whenever a candle is blown out and he patiently relights it. It was, perhaps, no more than subdued hysteria which suddenly drove me to break the long silence with strange sounds of laughter that awakened and clearly startled the cheik. After a little, I managed, somehow, to explain my unseemly outburst. The day before leaving Paris I had written to Lord Robert Cecil in earnest endeavour to persuade that fine enthusiast for the League of Nations that an international “Mother of Parliaments” could never maintain its authority under suspicion of antagonism to Islam. Therefore, I begged him to remove the stigma once and for all by going to Angora himself. And now the picture had flashed into my mind of Lord Robert, having responded to my suggestion, only to find himself being rattled about beside me, under an open umbrella, on the floor of a crawling luggage train in the black darkness of a wet night. It was a relief just then for all of us to join in a good laugh; but the policy of the League has not been helpful to Islam, and, in this matter, its unnecessary mistakes—as I have again and again pointed out—will prove a serious hamper to its otherwise splendid activities. Meanwhile, our merriment is soon checked. Sudden shrieks from the engine and an exceptionally generous supply of jolts and bangs conjure up to my mind awful visions of a collision in the gruesome loneliness of the night. The cheik, however, does not share my alarm, but calmly answers: “Methinks we do but unrail!” To me, however, the prospect suggested of ending my days in an Anatolian ditch, without even the covering of my Union Jack, offers but poor consolation.