For the Britishers and Indians conditions were not so bad, because they received occasional food parcels from home, and a small monthly remittance from the Red Cross. The Russians, Roumanians, and Serbs had neither money nor parcels. Some died of weakness, some sold half their clothing to buy food, and in consequence died of cold during the bitter winters. The Tommies were also better off in that they were supplied with clothes and boots by the Dutch Legation, which administered the Red Cross funds. Prisoners of other nationalities walked about gaunt and in tatters. The British gave them whatever food and tobacco could be spared on parcel-days, but even so they could often be seen scrambling for a thrown-away stump of cigarette, or for bits of bread or biscuit. Many seemed almost bestial in their hopeless misery. Only the Serbs, stoic as always maintained a reserved dignity and scorned to beg.
Two or three times a week we were allowed into Stamboul, in parties of two or three, each with a guard. On such days the usual rendezvous for lunch was a little restaurant near the bridge across the Golden Horn. To pass over the bridge across the Golden Horn was forbidden; for Pera, the European quarter, was pro-Ally almost to a man, and a British prisoner might find many helpers there. Even in the preëminently Turkish Stamboul one often happened upon sympathizers. There was, for example, a young Armenian who, whenever he could, talked politics to us on the little suburban railway between Stamboul and Psamatia, and told us the latest false report of an imminent peace.
"_Nous sommes tous des Anglophiles acharnés_," he assured F. and me.
The threatened interrogation never happened; and one evening it was announced that our party of seven was to return to Afion-kara-Hissar. From every point of view it would be advisable to remain in Constantinople. I believed it to be the only Turkish town in which one might arrange a successful escape, and I knew that it contained civilians who were either British themselves or willing to help British prisoners. Moreover, it offered infinite possibilities in the way of distraction, which were always attainable through _baksheesh_, that lowest common denominator of the Turkish Empire. And if the long-promised exchange of sick prisoners took place Constantinople was obviously the place where strings must be pulled if one wanted to be sent home on the strength of some feigned weakness.