week, through June and July, parties of them had left 

 Bagdad, following the route already taken by their officers. 

 They had been seen leaving the city camp and crowded 

 into the railway trucks which were to take them as far as 

 Samarra, the railhead (as it then was) some seventy miles 

 up the river. From there they would go afoot. Their 

 state of preparation for a march of 500 miles, the health 

 and strength and equipment which they possessed for 

 withstanding one of the fiercest summers of the globe, can 

 be pictured, and the efficiency of the Oriental care to which 

 they were entrusted is as easily imagined. The officers 

 who were left in Bagdad, and who watched them depart, 

 could only feel the deepest anxiety and dread. 



'The truth of what happened has only very gradually 

 become known, and in all its details it will never be known, 

 it is certain that this desert journey rests upon those respon- 

 sible for it as a crime of the kind which we call historic, so 

 long and terrible was the torture it meant for thousands 

 of helpless men.' If it is urged that Turkish powers of 

 organisation and forethought were utterly incapable of 

 handling such a problem as the transport of these prisoners, 

 the plea is sound enough as an explanation ; as an excuse 

 it is nothing. Thore was no one in the higher Turkish 

 command who could be ignorant of the fact that to send 

 the men out on such a journey and in such conditions 

 was to condemn half of them to certain death, unless every 

 proper precaution were taken. And there were precautions 

 which were easy and obvious, the chief one being that the 

 prisoners should not be deprived of the care for their health 

 which their own officers could give them. Yet even this 

 plain opportunity was sacrificed, as we have seen, with 

 perfect indifference to the fate of the mere rank and file. 

 Here, as always, we find that Turkish apathy is not as 

 simple as it seems; it betrays considerable respect of per- 

 sons, and it contrives to evade the most dangerous witnesses 

 of its guilt. 



DEAD BY THE ROADSIDE. 



" It was indeed by the purest accident that the British 

 doctors in Bagdad received the first confirmation of their 



56 



