And so the world went round. For indeed, however patient one is, it is impossible to live in the same room as ten other men, to eat there and sleep there, to spend half the day in their company, and not get nervy. Before long we had reached that state when we quarrelled over the most trifling things--about the dinner, whether we should have bully beef or a veal loaf. The slightest inconvenience awoke resentment. All the domestic details that cause friction in the married home were with us intensified a hundredfold, because there was with us none of the real and selfless affection which alone can bridge over these difficulties. Things had reached a sorry state by the time we had left; there was hardly a single officer who had a good word to say about his room. What we should have been like after another year I dread to imagine. As it was, it was bad enough. For myself I never stayed in the room one moment more than I could help. And often in the evenings after the doors had been shut, I used to walk up and down the cold stone corridor with Barron; we would do anything to get away from the room. It was the only way to preserve our balance. And here in its psychological aspect lies, I think, the true meaning of captivity; for in the bare recital of incidents there must be always a savour of the soulless. The conditions of life are only really important in as far as they form a framework for personality. It is the individual that counts, and the real meaning of eight months’ imprisonment does not lie in their political or sociological aspect, but in the effect that they have on character. For each person they had a different message, each person was touched in a different way. Probably through the mind of each individual flitted the same recurring moods, modified and altered by the demands of each particular temperament, but still the moods were the same fingers playing upon different strings. And for me, at any rate, the mood that recurred most frequently was one of a grey depression, mixed with a profound sense of the futility of human effort. Confinement inspires morbidity very quickly, and some of us used to take an almost savage delight in wrenching down the few frail bulwarks of an ultimate belief. From certain quotations we derived an exultant satisfaction. “Pleasure of life what is’t? the good hours of an ague.” We used to croon the words over to ourselves and endeavour to arrive at some stoic standpoint from which we could completely objectify ourselves and our ambitions.