mans handed them back to the Turks as useless. They 

 were next sent over the Taurus mountains, no provision 

 for food being made, and prodded forward by gendarmes 

 with the butts of rifles till of sheer inanition many dropped 

 and died. 



"A few managed to take refuge in certain German 

 and Austrian military camps in the Taurus," adds the 

 report, " but the main body was somehow beaten and 

 driven across the mountain range. It was like one thing 

 only a scene from Dante's Inferno; the word was that 

 of an Austrian office'r who witnessed it." 



From " The Times," Nov. 22, 1918. 



A despatch from Constantinople from Mr. G. Ward Price, 

 dated the nth November and received the 2ist November. 



I have spent the morning among our British prisoners 

 of war being collected here from different parts of Asia 

 Minor. There are men taken at Gallipoli, men from Kut, 

 and men from Palestine. One's first impression is that 

 they look better than one had hoped. But there is a grim 

 reason for that. All but the most stalwart and sound 

 died under their privations and ill-treatment, and this rem- 

 nant has been better fed and less harshly used during the 

 last six months by the Turks, because they foresaw the 

 day of reckoning. No suffering has been spared these 

 men, and it is fine to see how unbroken is their spirit still. 

 Though they have endured and seen cruelties that might 

 have reduced them to half-imbecile creatures, they remain 

 in look, bearing, and words soldiers and men. 



There are men here who worked in slave-gangs on the 

 Taurus railway, and were driven with sticks for 16 to 18 

 hours a day. This is the only place where I have heard 

 British soldiers speak of merciful treatment received from 



59 



