If there was a real victory to be celebrated, the most stringent police orders were issued that flags were to be flown everywhere--on every building. Surely it is only in a land like Turkey that one could see the curious sight I witnessed after the fall of Bucharest--the victorious flags of the Central Powers, surmounted by the Turkish crescent, flying even from the balconies of Rumanian subjects, because there had been a definite police warning issued that, in the case of non-compliance with the order, the houses would be immediately ransacked and the families inhabiting them sent off to the interior of Anatolia. Under the circumstances, refusal to carry out police orders was impossible. That was the Turkish idea of the respect due to individual liberty. This gives me an opportunity to say something of the treatment of prisoners. I may say in one word that it is, on the whole, good. Justice compels me to admit that the Turk, when he does take prisoners, treats them kindly and chivalrously; but he takes few prisoners, for he knows only too well how to wield his bayonet in those murderous charges he makes. Indeed, apart from the few hundred that fell into their hands in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-Turkish front, together with the crews of a few captured submarines, all the Turkish prisoners of war come from Kut-el-Amara. But the primitive Turk is all too sadly lacking in the comforts of life himself to be able to provide them for his prisoners. Without the help of the Commission that works under the protection of the American Embassy for the relief of the Entente prisoners, and sends piles of warm clothing, excellent shoes (which rouse the special envy of the Turks), chocolate, cakes, etc., to the Anatolian camps, these men, accustomed to European ways of life, would be in a sad plight. The repeated and humiliating marching of prisoners of war through the streets of Constantinople to show them off to the childish gaze of a people much influenced by externals, might with advantage be dispensed with. And it was certainly not exactly kind to make wounded English officers process past the Sultan at the Friday's "Selamlik"; it was rather too like slave-driving methods and the abuses of the Middle Ages. I was an unwilling witness of one most regrettable incident that took place shortly before I left Constantinople. In this case the sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners of war were cruelly exploited for political ends. A whole troup of about 2,000 Rumanians, from Dobrudja, were hounded up and down the streets of Pera and Stamboul in a purposely destitute and exhausted condition, so that the appearance of these poor wretches, who hung their heads dejectedly and had lost all trace of military bearing, might give the impression that the Turks were dealing with a very inferior foe and would soon be at the end of the business. This is how the authorities were going to increase the confidence of the doubting population!