The road to En-Dor, being an account of how two prisoners of war at Yozgad in Turkey won their way to freedom

Front matter

^^0^ o V

.0 % c"

A o.

Preface

"The only good that I can see in the demonstration of

the truth of 'spirituaHsm' is to furnish an additional argu-

^ ment against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than

die and be made to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a

guinea a seance." — T. H. Huxley.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY was never a prisoner of war in Turkey; otherwise he would have known that "spiritualism," pro\dded its truth be taken as demonstrated, has endless other uses — even for honest men. Lieutenant Hill and I found several of these uses. Spiritualism enabled us to kill much empty and weary time. It gave "True Believers" satisfactory messages, not only from the world beyond, but also from the various battle-fronts — which was much more interesting. It enabled us to obtain from the Turks comforts for ourselves and privileges for our brother officers. It extended our house room, secured a Hunt Club for our friends, and changed the mind of the Commandant from silent and uncompromising hostility to a post-prandial friendliness ablaze with the eloquence of the Spook. Our Spook in Yozgad instituted a correspondence with the Turkish War Office in Constantinople. (Hill and I flatter ourselves that no other Spirit has dictated letters and telegrams to and obtained replies from a Government Department in any country.) It even altered the moral outlook of the camp Interpreter, a typical Ottoman Jew. It induced him to return stolen property to the owner, and converted him to temporary honesty, if not to a New Religion (whether or not the same as the "New Revelation" of which Sir A. Conan Doyle is the chief British exponent we do not quite know). Finally, what concerned us more, it helped us to freedom.

There is a good deal about spiritualism in this book because the method adopted by us to regain our liberty happened to be that of spiritualism. But the activities of our viii PREFACE

Spook are after all only incidental to the main theme. The book is simply an account of how Lieutenant Hill and I got back to England. The events described took place between February 191 7 and October 191 8. The incidents may seem strange or even preposterous to the reader, but I venture to remind him that they are known to many of our fellow prisoners of war whose names are given in the text and at whose friendly instigation this book has been written.^

One thing more I must add. I began my experiments in spiritualism with a perfectly open mind, but from the time when the possibility of escape by these means first occurred to me I felt little concern as to whether communication with the dead was possible or not. The object of Lieutenant Hill and myself was to make it appear possible and to avoid being found" out. In doing so we had many opportunities of seeing the deplorable effects of belief in spiritualism. When in the atmosphere of the seance, men whose judgment one respects and whose mental powers one admires lose hold of the criteria of sane conclusions and construct for themselves a fantastic world on their new hypothesis. The messages we received from "the world beyond" and from "other minds in this sphere" were in every case, and from beginning to end, of our own invention. Yet the effect both on our friends and on the Turks was to lead them, as earnest investigators, to the same conclusions as Sir Oliver Lodge has reached, and the arrival of his book "Raymond" in the camp in 1918 only served to confirm them in their views. We do not know if such a thing as a "genuine" medium exists. We do know that, in the face of the most elaborate and persistent efforts to detect fraud, it is possible to convert intelligent, scientific, and otherwise highly educated men to spiritualism, by means of the arts and methods employed by "mediums" in general.

When we reached England Lieutenant Hill and I thought our dealings with spiritualism had served their purpose, but we now hope they may play an even better part. If this book saves one widow from lightly trusting the exponents of a creed that is crass and vulgar and in truth nothing better than a confused materialism, or one bereaved mother from pre-

^A list of the officers who were prisoners of war with us in Yozgad is given in Appendix I.

PREFACE ix ferring the unwholesome excitement of the seance and the trivial babble of a hired trickster to the healing power of mora and religious reflexion on the truths that give to human life its stability and worth— then the miseries and sufferings through which we passed in our struggle for freedom will mdeed have had a most ample reward.

E. H. Jones.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. How Spooking Began in Yozgad 17

II. How THE Camp Turned Spiritualist .... 26

Chapter I How Spooking Began In Yozgad

ON an afternoon late in February 191 7 a Turk mounted on a weary horse arrived in Yozgad. He had come a 120-mile journey through snowbound mountain passes from the railhead at Angora and he carried belated mail for us prisoners of war.

I could not feel grateful to him, for my share was only one postcard. It was from a very dear aunt. But I knew that somewhere in the Turkish Post Office were many more — from my wife, my mother, and my father. So I grumbled at all things Ottoman. I did not know this innocent-looking piece of cardboard was going to provide the whole camp with a subject for discussion for a year to come, and eventually prove the open sesame that got two of us out of Turkey.

Mail Day at Yozgad meant visits. The proper thing to do, after giving everybody time to read their letters several times over, was to go from room to room and pick up such scraps of war news as had escaped the eye of the censor. Some of us received cryptograms, or what we thought were cryptograms, from which we could reconstruct the position on the various fronts (if we had imagination enough), and guess at the progress of the war. The news that somebody's father's trousers had come down was, I remember, the occasion of a very merry evening, for it meant that Dad's Bags (or Baghdad) had fallen at last. If, as occasionally happened, we found hidden meanings where none was intended, and captured Metz or Jerusalem long before such a possibility was dreamt of in

England, it did more good than harm, for it kept our optimism alive.

I allowed the proper period to elapse and then crossed to the Seaman's room. "Come in," said Tudway to my inquiring head, "Mundey has been round already and we can give you all the news." (Mundey was our Champion Cryptogrammist.)

We discussed the various items of nev/s in the usual way, and decided that the war could not possibly last another three months. Then Alec Matthews turned to me:

"Had you any luck, Bones? What's your mail?"

"Only a postcard," I said. "No news in it, but it suggests a means of passing the evenings. I'm fed up on roulette and cards, myself, and I'd like to try it."

"What's the suggestion?" Alec asked.

"Spooking," said I.

"Cripes!" said Alec.

We began next night, a serious little group of experimenters from various comers of the earth. Each of us in his own little sphere had seen something of the wonders of the world and was keen to learn more. There was "Doc." O'Farrell, the bacteriologist, who had fought sleeping-sickness in Central Africa. He argued that the fact that we could not see them was no proof that spooks did not exist, and told us of things revealed by the microscope, things that undoubtedly "are there," with queer shapes and grisly names. (The pictures he drew of some of his pet "bugs" gave me a new idea for my next nightmare.) Then there was Little, the geologist from the Sudan, who knew all about the earth and the construction thereof, and had dug up the fossilized remains of weird and enormous animals. His pets were as big as the Doc's were small. There was Price, the submarine man from under the sea, and Tudway (plain Navy) from on top of it. And there is a saying about those who go down to the sea in ships which was never truer than of these two men. There was Matthews, from India, sapper and scientist. He knew all about wireless telegraphy and ether and the various lengths of the various kinds of waves, and he did not see why "thought waves" should not exist in some of the gaps, in the series which we thought to be empty. And there was the writer, who knew nothing of scientific value. He had studied psychology at College, and human nature amongst the jungle folk in Burma.

Such was the group which first took up spooking. None of us knew anything about the subject, but my postcard gave clear instructions and we followed them. Matthews brought in the best table we possessed (a masterpiece made by Colbeck out of an old packing-case), and Doc. groomed the top of it with the corner of his embassy coat, so as to make it slippery enough for the Spook to slide about on with comfort.

Tudway and Price cut out squares of paper, and Little wrote a letter of the alphabet on each and arranged them in a circle round the edge of the table. I polished the tumbler in which we hoped to capture the Spook, and placed it upside down in the centre of the circle. Everything was ready. We had constructed our first "Ouija."

"Now what do we do?" Doc. asked.

''Two of us put a finger lightly on the glass^ close our eyes and make our minds blank."

"Faithl" said the Doc, "we'd better get a couple of Red Tabs from the Majors' House; this looks like a Staff job. An' what next?"

"Then the glass should begin to move about and touchPthe letters. Somebody must note down the ones touched."

Doc. sat down and put his forefinger gingerly on the glass. I took the place opposite him. Price and Matthews, pencil in hand, leant forward ready to take notes. Little and Tudway and Dorling and Boyes stood round to watch developments. Doc. and I closed our eyes and waited, fingers resting lightly on the glass, arms extended. For perhaps fifteen minutes there was a tense silence and our arms grew unendurably numb. Nothing happened.

Our places at the table were taken by two other investigators, and theirs in turn by two more, but always with a total absence of any result. We warmed the glass over a tallow candle — somebody had said it was a good thing to do — and re-polished the table. Then Doc. and I tried again.

"Ask it some question," Price whispered.

"WHO— ARE— YOU?" said the Doc. in sepulchral tones, and forthwith I was conscious of a tilting and a straining in the glass, and then, very slowly, it began to move in gradually widening circles. It touched a letter, and the whole company craned their necks to see it.

"Bl" they whispered in chorus.

It touched another. "Rl" said everybody.

"I believe it is going to write 'Brown/ " said Dorling, and the movement suddenly stopped.

"There ye go spoilin' everything with yer talkin*," growled the Doc, his Irish accent coming out under the influence of excitement. "Will ye hold your tongues now, and we'll be after tryin' again!"

We tried again — ^we tried for several nights — but it was no use. The glass did not budge, or, if it did, it travelled in small circles and did not approach the letters. We blamed our tools for our poor mediumship and substituted a large enamelled tray for the table, which had a crack down the centre where the glass used to stick. The tray was an improvement and we began to reach the letters. But we never got sense. The usual seance was something like this:

Doc: "Who are you?" Answer: "DFPBJQ."

Doc: "Try again. Who are you?" Answer: "DFPMGJQ."

Matthews: "It's obviously trying to say something — the same letters nearly, each time. Try again."

Doc: "Who are you?" Answer: "THRSWV."

Matthews: "That's put the lid on. Ask something else."

Doc: "Have you anything to say?" Answer: "WNSRY- KXCBJ," and so on, and so on, page after page of meaningless letters. It grew monotonous even for prisoners of war, and in time the less enthusiastic investigators dropped out. At the end of a fortnight only Price, Matthews, Doc O'Farrell and myself were left. We were intrigued by the fact that the glass should move at all without our consciously pushing it — I shall never forget Alec Matthews' cry of wonder the first time he felt the "life" in the glass — and we persevered.

Then our friend Gatherer came in. He said he didn't care very much for this sort of thing, but he knew how to do it and would show us. He placed his fingers on the glass and addressed the Spook. We, as became novices, had always shown a certain respect in our manner of questioning the Unknown. Gatherer spoke as if he were addressing a defaulter, or a company on parade, with a ring in his voice which indicated he would stand no nonsense. And forthwith the glass began to talk sense. Its answers were short — usually no more than a "yes" or a "no" — but they were certainly understandable. Once more we were all intensely interested. Gatherer did more than add fuel to the waning fire of our enthusiasm. He presented us with his own spook-board, which he and another officer had made some months before, and used in secret. It was a piece of sheet iron on which the glass moved much more smoothly than on the tray or the table, and he suggested pasting down the letters in such a way that they could not be knocked off by the movement of the glass. Later on Matthews still further improved it by adding a raised "scantling" round the edge which prevented the glass from leaving the circle.

Gatherer was in great request, for without him we could get nothing, try we never so hard. But he would not come — he "dishked it" — ^he "had other things to do," he "might come tomorrow," and so on. Ah, Gatherer, you have much to answer for! Had you never shown us that intelligible replies could be obtained, I might have remained an honest little enquirer, happy in the mere moving of the glass. But now, mere movement was no longer satisfying. We were tired of our own company, and knew one another as only fellow-prisoners can. We wanted a chat with somebody "outside," somebody with ideas culled beyond our prison walls, whose mind was not an open book to us, whose thoughts were not limited to the probable date of the end of the war or of the arrival of the next mail from home. It did not matter who it was — ■ Julius Caesar or Socrates, Christopher Columbus or Aspasia (it is true we rather hoped for Aspasia, especially the Doc), but any old Tom, or Dick, or Harry would have been welcome. You ought to have known that. Gatherer, for you were a prisoner, too; but you were callous, and left us alone to record our meaningless X's, and Y's and Z's.

After another week of failure we grew desperate. "If we get nothing to-night," said Matthews, "we'll chuck it."

We tried hard, and got nothing.

"One more shot, Bones," said the Doc, sitting down opposite me.

I glanced at him, and from him to Price and Matthews. Disappointment was written on every face. Success had seemed so near, and we had laboured so hard. Was this to end as so many of our efforts at amusement had ended, in utter boredom?

The doctor began pulling up the sleeves of his coat as though he were leading a forlorn hope.

"Right you are. Doc." I put my fingers on the glass. "One more shot," and as I said it the Devil of Mischief that is in every Celt whispered to me that the little man must not go empty away. We closed our eyes.

"For the last time," said the Doc. "WHO— ARE— YOU?"

The glass began to move across the board.

"S-,"^ Matthews read aloud, "A-L-L-Y— SALLYI"

"Sally," Price repeated, in a whisper.

"Sally," I echoed again.

The Doc. wriggled forward in his chair, tugging up his coatsleeves. "Keep at it," he whispered excitedly. "Keep at it, we've got one at last." And then in a loud voice that had a slight quaver in it

"GOOD EVENING, SALLYI HAVE YE ANYTHIN' TO TELL US?"

Sally had quite a lot to tell us. She made love to Alec Matthews (much to his delight) in the most barefaced way, and then coolly informed him that she preferred sailor-boys. Price beamed, and replied in fitting terms. She talked seriously to the Doc. (who had murmured — out of jealousy, I expect — that Sally seemed a brazen hussy), and warned us to be careful what we said in the presence of a lady. (That "presence of a lady" startled us — most of us hadn't seen a lady for nearly three years.) She accused me of being unbecomingly dressed. (Pyjamas and a blanket — quite respectable for a prisoner.) Then she complained of "feeling tired," made one or two most unladylike remarks when we pressed her to tell us more, and "went away."

I had fully intended to tell them that I had steered the glass, with my eyes shut, from my memory of the position of the letters. But the talk became too good to interrupt. There were theories as to who Sally could be. Was she dead, or alive, or non-existent? Was the glass guided by a spook or by subconscious efforts? Then round again on to the old argument of why the glass moved at all. Was it the unconscious exercise of muscular force by one or both of the mediums or was it some external power? I lay back and listened to the sapper and the submarine man and the scientist from Central Africa. Others dropped in and added their voices and extracts from their experience to the discussion. Dorling had schoolboy reminiscences of a thought-reading entertainment, which was somehow allied to the subject in hand. Winnie Smith knew someone — I think it was one of his second cousins in Russia, or a crowned head, or somebody of the kind — who had a pet spook in the house. I told my story of the dak bungalow in Myinmu Township in Burma, where there is a black ghost-dog, who does not mind revolver bullets. We talked, and we talked, and we talked, forgetting the war and the sentries outside and all the monotony of imprisonment. And always the talk rounded back to Sally and the spook-glass that moved no one knew how. The others slipped away to bed, and we were left alone — ^Alec, Price, the Doc, and myself. I braced myself to confess the fraud, but Doc. raised his tin mug:

"Here's to Sally and success, and many more happy evenings," said he.

Facilis descensus Avernif I lifted my mug with the rest, and drank in silence. Little I guessed how much water was to flow under the bridges before I could make my confession, or under what strange conditions that confession was to be made.

Next day I woke — a worm. I felt as if I had caught myself taking sweeties from a child. They had all accepted the wonder of the previous night so uncritically. It was a shame. It was unforgivable! I would get out of bed. I would go across and tell them at once.

"Don't," said the Devil of Mischief. "Stay where you are. It was only a rag. If you really want to tell them, any old time will do. Besides, it's beastly cold this morning, and you've got a headache. Stay in bed!"

"But it wasn't a rag. We were experimenting in earnest," said I. "That's why it was so mean." I got one foot out of bed.

"Stay where you are, I tell you," said the Devil. "You gave them a jolly good evening, and you can have plenty more."

I pulled my foot back under the blankets again. Yes, we had had a jolly evening — the Doc. himself had said so. I would think it over a little longer.

I thought it over — and started up again.

"You assl" said the Devil. "They'll only laugh at you! The whole thing's a fraud, anjrway. Let them find out for themselves. Oliver Lodge, Conan Doyle, and the rest of the precious crew are victims in the same way."

"I won't," said I. "I'm going to tell them." I got up and dressed slowly.

"See Jaere," said the Devil. "What you gave them last night was something new to talk about. Carry on! It does them good. It sets them thinking. Carry on!"

"And what sort of a swine will I look when they find me out?" said I.

"But they won't," said the Devil.

"But they will — they must," said I, and opened the door.

On the landing outside was our "Wardie," once of America, doing Miiller's exercises to get the stiffness out of his wounded shoulder. That was a Holy Rite, which nothing was allowed to interrupt. But to-day he stopped and faced me. I think my Devil must have entered into him.

"Hello, Bones, you sly dog!" said he.^

"What's up, Wardie?"

"Oh, you don't get me with your larks," he said, grinning at me. "/ know you, you old leg-puller!"

I made to pas§ on.

"You and your Sally," he chuckled.

"Oh, that!" I said, and tried again to pass. '

"Come on, Bones," he continued; "how d'you do it?"

"Why, that's spooking, Wardie," said I.

* Of course neither this nor any other of the conversations in the book claims to be a verbatim report of what was said. Such a thing would be difficult to give even after twenty-four hours — much more so after two years. These conversations are "true" in the sense that they are faithful reconstructions of my recollection of what took place. Every event mentioned in the book occurred. (See footnote, p. 103.)

"Oh, get on with you! You don't catch mel I'm too old a bird, Sonny. How's it done?"

"You've seen! You sit with your fingers on a glass, and the glass moves about."

"Yes, yes, it moves all right. But this Sally business? These answers?"

"That's what everybody's trying to find out, Wardie."

"I'll find out one of these fine days, Bones me boy!" He dug his thumb into my ribs and laughed at me.

"Right-o, Wardie," said I, and went back into my room. My dander was up.

Chapter II How The Camp Turned Spiritualist

I MADE up my mind to rag for an evening or two more and to face the music, when it came, in the proper spirit. There was a recognized form of punishment at Yozgad for a ''rag." It was a "posh." ^ In my case, with Doc, Matthews, Price, and of course the Seaman (who always joined in on principle) as my torturers, I expected it would be a super-posh, and trembled accordin'. I had no doubt in my own mind that discovery would come very soon.

When evening came round, there were Alec, Doc, and Price waiting round the spook-board with their tongues out, wanting more "Sally." I sat down with the unholy joy of the small boy preparing a snowball in ambush for some huge and superior person of uncertain temper, and with not a little of his fear of being found out before the snowball gets home on the target.

"Now, Doc," said I, tr5dng to avert suspicion from myself, "don't you get larking. I'm beginning to suspect you."

"And I'm suspecting you," he laughed. "Come on, ye old blackguard ! " ■

We started, and for several minutes got nothing but a series of unintelligible letters. The reason for this was simple enough. The "medium's" mind was blank. I hadn't the foggiest notion of what to say, and could only push the glass about indiscriminately. Matthews and Price faithfully noted

^ I believe the English language is indebted to Lieut. L. C. P. TuDWAY, R.N., for the invention of this word. A "posh" is a goodtempered cross between a riot and a rugby scrum. The object of the "poshers" is conjointly and severally to sit upon the victim and to pinch, smack, tickle, or otherwise torture him until he begs for mercy.

down every letter touched. This kept everybody happy, and as a matter of fact formed a useful precedent for future occasions.

"It's there all right," said Alec. "Keep it up, you fellows. We'll get something soon."

Gatherer came in, and after watching for a minute gave an order to the Spook in his parade voice: "Go round and look at your letters."

The indiscriminate zig-zagging stopped and the glass went round the circle slowly.

"Geel Snakes!" said Alec. "That's the stuff, Gatherer; give It some more!"

"No sense in being afraid of the blighter," said Gatherer. "Here! Stop going round now! Tell us who you are!"

"Go — to — hell!" came the answer.

Gatherer was not abashed. "Is that where you are?" he asked, and the Spook began to swear most horribly. My mind was no longer blank; it teemed with memories of my court in Burma, and the glass said to Gatherer what the old bazaar women of the East say to one another before they get "run in."

"All right, old chap," said Gatherer. "That's enough. I'm sorry. I apologise."

"Go away," said the Spook, and until Gatherer obeyed the glass would do nothing but repeat, "Go away," "Go away," to every question that was asked.

Looking back, I can see this was an important episode. Of course the glass wrote "go away" because I could think of nothing better to say at the moment (practice was to make my imagination much more fertile), and it kept on repeating the request because I had begun to wonder if I really could make Gatherer leave the room.

"Shall I go?" Gatherer asked.

"Faith! You'd better," said the Doc, "or who knows what It will be saying next?"

Gatherer went, and the Spook began to write again. It might well do so, for It had begun to establish its "Authority."

Now, for successful spooking, "Authority" is all-important. The utterances of a medium "under control" must be, and are for the believer, the object of an unquestioning reverence.

I have two small mites of children. They usually demand a "story" of an evening. Since my return they have gradually established a precedent, and it has become a condition for their going to bed. I take them on my knees, their silky hair against my cheeks, and look into the fire for inspiration about "elephants" or "tigers" or "princesses," or whatever may be the subject of immediate interest and then I begin. I don't go very far without a question, and when that is successfully negotiated there are two more questions on the ends of their restless tongues. The linked answers comprise the story. Nobody makes any bones about the credibility of it, because "father tells it." Thousands of other fathers are doing the same every day. Parents yet to be will continue the good work for the generations unborn.

What the parent is for the child, the medium is for "believers." The gentle art, as Hill (my ultimate partner in the game) and I know it, is merely a matter of shifting the authorship of the answers from yourself to some Unknown Third, whose authority has become as unquestionable to the "sitter" as the father's is to the child. Once that is achieved the problem in each case is precisely the same. It consists in answering questions in a manner satisfactory to the audience. I also find there is no fundamental difference in the material required for the "links." Granted the "authority," the same sort of stuff pleases them all alike, children and grown-up "sitters." If you have ever watched a true believer at a sitting you will know exactly what I mean; and if you can describe the palace of an imaginary princess, you can also describe the sixth, or seventh, or the eighth "sphere." But of course you must always be careful to call it a "palace" in the one instance, and a "sphere" in the other.

I did not realize this all at once. I did not set out with any scheme of building up the Spook's authority. I laid out for myself no definite line of action against my friends. My policy, in fact, was that by which our own British Empire has grown. I determined to do the job nearest to hand as well as I could, and to tackle each problem as it arose. I would "rag around a bit" and then withdraw as soon as circumstances permitted me to do so gracefully. "But circumstances never permitted. One thing led to another, and my "commit-

THE ROAD TO EN-DOR 2g

ments" in the spook-world grew steadily, as those of our Empire have done in this.

Nor, needless to say, did I see at this time the faintest resemblance between Alec calling for "Sally" and my small boy demanding a "story" at my knee. To me, Alec and Doc. and Price (not to mention the rest of the camp) were grown men, thewed and sinewed, with the varied store of wisdom that grown men acquire in their wanderings up and down the wide seas and the broad lands of this old Empire of ours. They were "enquirers" — not "true believers" as yet — and as I was to find out in due course, they were "no mugs" at enquiring. I could only hug myself at the idea of the poshing I would get when the rag was discovered, and fight my hardest to ward off the evil day.