HOW IT FEELS TO BE FREE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16507, 26 April 1919, Page 11

HOW IT FEELS TO BE FREE.

(By AN OFFICER EX-PRISOXER.) The lean years arc past, The pri.•oners of war aro back from luiUey. Our captivity is over. At times I can hardy believe it, yet it is as real and solid a fact as the fat birds I have been eating this Yuletfde. To wakn up and hear robins sinfiin", to wallow .in a long hot bath, to eat ham and drink toa that, tastes like tea—these are but the beginnings of the amazing day. One cannot easily, get over one's delight at ha-ung passW from an alien and unclean country to this garden land of England, where everything is so clean and beautiful. Even the terrier is immaculate and flealcss. , But in spite of ali one's pleasure a vein of sorrow runs through .these deys . . There might have been so many more of us to enjoy this peace it the Turk had treated his captives properl v. One cannot forget the many missing: they will always be present with us. who saw them alive two years °As an officer my treatment might be described as good (by a stretch of the imagination) when compared with tne way our men were dealt with. me callous cruelty shown to them j sha.l remember so lons as I live, and their magnificent bearjng in adversity. They suffered, and often they died, like Englishmen. We must see to it that they did not die in vain. In every stage of disease aud destitution our men showed their captors the stuff of which the race is made. It is our turn now. It will bo fatally easy to find a few scapegoats or to accept compensation for crimes which onlv punishment can purge. But I hope that everyone, down to the last man. who was responsible for the maltreatment of our prisoners will be tried b.v a civilised court. Only thus will the prestige lost when our men were murdered bo again restored. In the starlight the waits sing of peace. Our prisoners home from Turkey are hearing them all over England. All that is left of our prisoners. ... Of the gallant 6th Division, for instance, that laid the basis of our power in Mesopotamia, not a thousand have seen this New Year in. Fichtv per cent, of the garrison of Kut-el-Amara died while captives with the Turks. But they arc quit of their guards now; they have clone with starvation and disease and tho terrible desert. They rejoice with us, let us hope, and are glad to be of that white company that has he'd our honnm- high. And we survivors, who will live in a new era of justice," do devoutlv hope that, all the consequences of justice will fall upon those pvil men who battened on the misery of the boys who might have lived. * *-