October 24, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
13 
up with Envcr and suggested that a neutral doctor and 
officer examine the Turks in Egypt and report on the 
truth of the stories. We ,promptly received word that 
tlie report was false, and that, as a matter of fact, the 
Turkish prisoners in Enghsh hands were receiving excellent 
treatment. 
Alxiut this time I called on Monsignor Dqlci, the Apostolic 
Delegate in Turkey. He happened to refer to a Lieutenant 
Fitzgerald, who, he said, was then a prisoner of war at Afium 
Kara Hissar. 
"I am much interested in him," said Monsignor Dolci, 
because he is engaged to the daughter of the British Minister 
to the Vatican. I spoke to Enver about him, and he promised 
that he would receive special treatment." 
"What is his first name ?" I asked. 
"Jeffrey." 
"He's receiving 'special treatment' indeed," 1 answered. 
"Do you know that he is in a dungeon in Constantinople 
this very moment ? " 
Naturally M. Dolri was much disturted, but I reassured 
him, saying that his protege would be released in a few 
days. 
"You see how shamefully you treated these young men," 
I now said to Enver, "3'ou should do something to make 
amends." 
".AH right : what would you suggest ?" 
Stoker and Fitzgerald were prisoners of war, and, according 
to the usual rule, would have been sent back to the prison 
camp after being released from their dungeon. 1 now pro- 
posed that Enver should give them a vacation of eight days 
in Constantinople. He entered into the spirit of the occasion, 
and the men were released. They certainly presented a 
sorry sight ; they had spent twenty- five days in the dungeon, 
with no chance to bathe or to shave, with no change of linen 
or any of the decencies of life. But Mr. Philip took charge, 
furnished them the necessaries, and in a brief period we had 
before us two }'oung and handsome British naval officers. 
Their eight days' freedom turned out to be a triumphal 
procession, notwithstanding that they were always accom- 
panied by an English-speaking Turkish officer. Monsignor 
Dolci and the American Embassy entertained them at dinner 
and they had a pleasant visit at the Girls' College. When 
the time came to return to their prison camp, the young 
men declared that they would be glad to spend another 
month in dungeons, if they could have a corresponding 
period of freedom in the city when liberated. 
In spite of all that has happened, I shall always have 
a kindly feeling towards Enver for his treatment of Fitzgerald. 
1 told the Minister of War about the lieutenant's engagement. 
"Don't you think he's been punished enough ?" I asked. 
"Why don't you let the txjy go home and marry his sweet- 
heart ? " 
The proposition immediately appealed to Envcr's senti- 
mental side. 
"I'll do it," he replied, "if he will give me his word of 
honour not to fight against Turkey any more." 
Fitzgerald naturally gave this ])romise, and so his com-- 
paratively brief stay in the dungeon had tlie result of freeing 
him from imprisonment and restoring him to happiness. As 
poor Stoker had formed no romantic attachments that 
would have justified a similar plea in his case, he had to go 
back to the prison in .Asia Minor. He did this, however, 
in a genuinely sporting spirit that was worthy of the best 
traditions of the British Navy. 
Colonel Alderson's Imagination 
A Story of Gallipoli 
IMAGINATION I " Alderson e.vclaimcd. "Irragination 
merely casts a cloak of mystery round everyday 
events, and lends a mysterious depth to the most 
pellucid waters : it sedHces the soldier to the level of 
the romancer, the poet, or the priest. It's a fatality : 
nothing less." 
We had been discussing the temperament of the successful 
soldier, but without getting in any way to the root of the 
matter. I had put in a plea for imagination as the indis- 
pensable quality, but without any real assurance on the 
point. We all felt that Alderson was the one man who 
could help us out of our difficulty : lie had seen the war 
in all its phases, and his silent apostasy from the faith qf 
the professional soldier was a striking incident in a career 
which had hardly promised the unexpected. 
"The romance of war!" Alderson went on. "There's a 
plirase which has sent more men to hell . . . no, my dear 
fellow, not to heaven . . . that facile optimism is no doubt 
very comforting to statesmen who make wars, but when 
you're lying out in No Man's Land, with machine-gun bullets 
playing round you in narrowing circles, the vision of Eternity 
takes £l more sombre hue. One stares into the abyss, and 
is blinded . . . blinded . . . and not by the brilliance of 
the vision, I can assure j'ou. . . . 
" Imagination, the capacity to see an immortal soul in the 
face of your enemy, or a woman's broken heart in the mangled 
remnants of a corpse whose proper sigViificance is as a piece of 
useful building material in an emergency — no, Spencer, I 
can't admit that its anything less than fatal. You men- 
tioned Broderson ? " 
"Broderson, the poet, you mean; yes, I did. I should 
have thought thathe, the man of imagination par excellence, 
poet, critic, actor, with every gift of. sympathy and sensi- 
bility ; if he didn't fail as a soldier, it can't have been from 
lack of imagination. As a matter of fact, I'm told that 
bv sheer force of will he became the most sane, practical, 
efficient officer you could want." 
" Do you know how he died ? " Alderson asked sternly, 
in a manner which was rather surprising. 
"Beating off a small r?id out in Gallipoli, wasn't it?" 
I replied, rather offended, as a matter of fact, at Alderson's 
pose. He himself had written some of the finest poetry 
which the war had produced up to that time, and his 
unaccountable bitterness on the subject of imagination 
1 couldn't help connecting with his failure — through no 
fault of his own, mind you — to get a brigade 
"Well, Spencer, I'll tell you the story of that raid now. 
I've never told it before ; but, well, one can't live for ever 
with an illusion. 
"No IVLtu's Land always dominated Broderson. It had 
not yielded its secret to him ; and with the secret fast in its 
own keeping, it enchanted him with its undeniable flavour 
of romance. It held for him all those limitless possibilities 
which the desert holds for the explorer, and the future for 
a man wlio knows nothing— or everything — about the past. 
For a man like Broderson it had an illusory quality of reality ; 
it was a menace to his egoism, a fantastic protagonist, the 
battle-ground of Titans and of his own dreams. You must 
understand this if you are to understand the story." 
"One night in July 1 met him, as I was going round his 
companv front ; it was a new sector to all of us, in front 
of the vinevard, and our line was not so near the Turks as 
it became after the .August battles, and I caught Broderson 
— caught him red-handed. ... I use the words advisedly. 
He was stealing out over the parapet out into No Man's 
Land ; and, believe me, there was a look on that boy's face 
of positive exaltation, of something ardently longed for, and 
now, for once, within — or, perhaps, only just beyond — 
his reach. 
" I asked him where he was going ; but 1 knew, of course. 
He was going in search of himself . . . that one' unending 
quest, which modern egoism, or altruism, demands of all 
of us. He murmured something about the wire, shame- 
facedly — none of us, I suppose, like to stand pitilessly 
revealed to the outside world, and I can't flatter myself 
that he understood, well, that I understood, you know — . 
"It was one of those clear, still nights when nothing could 
live outside our wire, except on the assumption that the 
Turk was asleep, which was not much of a habit of his ; a.nd 
I told Broderson not to think of leaving his lines. I felt, 
of course, that he considered me an ass ; but my grief at 
this was tempered by the pleasant feeling of superiority 
which the old soldier who has finally conquered courage 
has over the younger and more refreshing enthusiasts who 
are still victims of that unsoldicrly complaint. 
"It was a dark, still night, full of the whispering of dead 
things, and echoing with the call of strange voices. I was 
almost . . . no, hardly . . . but in a mood — yes,- dis- 
tinctly in a mood — to he caiight by the enchantment of the 
hour. I could have sat down and written something which 
would have touched the verge of things. But ten years' 
soldiering disciplines one, perhaps. .Anyway, I didn't. 
1 wandered on through Broderson's front line, and was 
groping my way along, when I became conscious — as one 
