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ENGLISH PRISONERS FROM YPRES 351
point to me, and heard them exclaim :
" No, really, that
fellow ? " A moment later I had my revenge and told them
who the German officer was that they had been talking to,
and this surprised them even more. Perhaps they themselves
will tell of our visit when the hour of peace has struck.
One of the lieutenants was a well-bred and pleasant young
fellow, the son of a prominent merchant in London. His
father did business with Germany, and he himself had stayed
there—I believe in Hamburg—to learn the language. He said
that the war had turned all his plans completely upside down,
" but we had no option but to come into the war," he thought.
We took a friendly farewell of the four officers, and drove
back to Lille to pay a visit to the citadel, where a body of
Indian prisoners were said to be interned. The French citadel
is now a German barracks. German soldiers and military cars
and a number of captured guns were ranged up in the yard,
but there were no Indian prisoners, I am sorry to say. They
had been moved east the same morning—for it is necessary
to clear as quickly as possible all available space to make room
for the fresh batches which pour in from the front in a continu-
ous stream. However, I could do without the Indians. I had
seen them before, in their own country, under India’s burning
sun. There they are in their element. That is where they
ought to be now. But I cannot deny that it would after all
have been very interesting to meet them here again, and to
find out what they thought of life in the foggy autumn of
Artois and Flanders. I myself knew what it was like to try
to acclimatise Indians in a colder climate. On my last journey
in Tibet I had with me two Rajputs from Kashmir. When we
got up amongst the mountains, they nearly froze to death,
and my caravan leader, Mohammed Isa, declared that they
were of no more use than the puppies we had with us. So they
were discharged, and sent back to their tepid valleys. The
same thing happened with my Hindoo cook from Madras.
I realised that I had been guilty of a piece of stupidity in think-
ing that they could be used outside India. In Tibet one lives
on meat, in India on vegetables. How could they possibly
stand a sudden change both of climate and diet ?
And now I had read in the newspapers that the British had
organised a complete importation of Indians into Europe.
I had found it very difficult to believe these reports, but at
the front I found that they were really true. " How do you
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