[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

III ORGANIZATION OF KNOCKALOE

I Do not know how it came about, but all at once the camp seemed to have become a sort of organized community. In the first days it had been a rabble, or rather two rabbles, for when our rabble arrived the camp was already half filled with a previous batch of prisoners. The two batches were very unlike. Ours consisted mostly of men who had lived for years, in some cases nearly all their lives, in England: business-men, merchants, well-to-do people, but also waiters, hairdressers, small tradesmen. A middle-class collection of many shades. Our predecessors were entirely different. They were people who had been taken off steamers and cargoes, German or others. They were mostly sailors, but there were a good many nondescript and some rather romantic individuals amongst the lot. I don't know the reason of this incongruous mixture. It was rather exceptional, for the authorities tried as a rule to keep the classes separate. There was a perfect example of that policy in one of the compounds of Knockaloe which was inhabited solely by men whom the French papers invariably allude to as ' tristes individus ' or as ' peu intëressants,' which means that they live on the earnings of women more poetically called ' filles de joie.' There had been, I learnt, a flourishing trade in that article of export from Hamburg to London, and the tristes individus had followed the daughters of joy in order to keep an eye on them. The neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road had been their gathering-place, but at the outbreak of war the men had been interned and later on sent to Knockaloe. The women were, I suppose, sent out of the country, but the fate of the men seemed more extraordinary, for surely of all prisoners they were the least capable of carrying on in an internment camp. What could one thousand tristes individus do with not one daughter of joy between them, I wondered, and had there really been exactly one thousand of them to fill one of those neat compound-cages or, if there were more, had they overflowed into other and more virtuous cages; if there were less, had there been padding? Or was the whole tale a myth-there was no way of finding out the truth, for one did not come into contact with inmates of other compounds, except of the two adjoining one's own to whom one could shout through the wire.

Our compound, at any rate, was mixed, and perhaps that made some sort of interior administration all the more necessary, but all the same, I wonder how it created itself out of nothing. There was a 'captain ' to every hut, and a 'chief-captain ' to head them all and they must have been elected, but why one should have voted for anyone in particular out of that crowd of unknown people I cannot imagine. I suppose I didn't vote, and I was certainly surprised when I discovered our hut had a captain who looked like one of the stout, middle-aged gentlemen in frock-coats who said ' Anything I can do for you, sir? ' to one in London's great emporiums. He quite felt the importance of his position though ; he really looked on himself as a superior officer, and the strange part was that there were a good many people who shared his opinion and who liked having a person of authority above them ! I don't know whether that state of things belongs to all prison life and whether hard labour men elect a chief who is majestically condescending to them, but humble and servile to the gaolers.

Things shaped themselves gradually. True, the ' latrines ' were still far from finished, but chairs had arrived, and one now sat down to meals, which seemed as odd at first as washing within walls when the washhouse was completed, and it had suddenly become immoral and a serious offence to wash out of doors. The showers were a great boon though, and I took much pride in having a showerbath without allowing the water to extinguish my cigarette. The canteen was open for longer hours now, and one could buy chocolates and apples there, but the food remained awful and insufficient, nor was being assured that we were treated exactly the same as British prisoners were being treated in Germany much of a consolation. There was watery soup with bits of grease swimming about in it, or else some stringy lumps of meat, and the fresh air made one feel very hungry, so there was plenty of grumbling.

About that time I heard from London that it was very difficult to do anything for one once one had actually been interned, but still there was a chance, and no need to despair. That did not trouble me so very much, for I was just beginning to enjoy the advantages of my new status. I had got my first letters from home and my people had got mine. One was allowed to write twice a week, on one page of glazed paper, and it was forbidden to mention either the war or conditions in camp. Of course all letters had to pass a censor. That left really nothing to write about, as one no longer knew anything outside the camp, but it served at least as a sign of life. We were now in the summer of 1915, the war was a year old, and I had only heard once from home until then. Money arrived; it had to be addressed to the Camp Bank which took care of it and allowed one to draw £1 a week. That was a great personal relief, but it instantly introduced 'social injustice' and class distinction into what would otherwise have become a communist society. This men-state now had two sharply divided classes, the £1 a week class and the moneyless class, the capitalist and the proletarian. I don't know what the proportion may have been in the other compounds, in ours the capitalists hardly amounted to 10 per cent. Nearly 50 per cent. of the inmates were sailors; of the other 50 roughly 40 had been waiters, barbers, small tradesmen, or servants. The remaining 10, the capitalist class, was composed of business-men or young clerks. There was no one over 50 (for men above military age were repatriated on both sides), there was no one under 18 years of age ; it was a society without women, without children, and without old people. Ninety per cent. of the men had no income now they were interned ; it stands to reason that they made every effort to make money, it will also be understood that there were but few possibilities of doing so. Commerce, they say, obeys the law of supply and demand; I have certainly never seen such an overwhelming amount of supply and such an infinitely restricted demand! There were at least one hundred men or youths anxious to clean your shoes, and never in my life have my shoes looked so brilliant and been cleaned so many times a day, though the circumstances really did not call for it. We had over eighty barbers, but I could do no more for them than be shaved once a day, which sufficed, however, to make me highly popular with them. Their charge - see supply and demand - was one penny, but they did not object to the degradation of a tip of a halfpenny or more. And really both shoe-blacks and barbers were quite superfluous, for every but had half a dozen 'stewards' to do the waiting and cleaning who were only too anxious to make a little extra money, and if you were known as one of the plutocrats - which you inevitably were - you simply had to accept the offers of one of the many who wished to become your 'private valet ' - Noblesse oblige ! True, such a post was rather a desirable one, for there was no work to do : no cleaning and sweeping, no errands, no clothes to press or silver to clean. A pity really, for my own valet would have done all that and a good deal more most perfectly. He was a very grand person indeed, and his last post but one had been that of valet to the Khedive. His name was Charlie, he was about forty, and always in the best of tempers ; a very charming man really who would have made a perfect butler in the most baronial of halls. After leaving the Egyptian monarch he had been steward on a big liner, and that was how he came to be at Knockaloe. It was Charlie who cleaned my shoes for the very first time every morning, also he rolled up my paillasse and folded my cover. That is all he ever did as far as I remember, but the salary he received corresponded to the extent of his efforts. One could also by payment find a man who would replace you at your weekly turn of potato-peeling. I tried that work once, but my conception was considered too cubist. All things considered, the social problem had found a fairly satisfactory solution during these first weeks in the Isle of Man.

On the day of my arrival I had been urged by my taxi-friends to subscribe a petition to be removed to the internment camp at Wakefield. Wakefield was a paradise compared to this, they said, it was one of the two 'gentlemen's camps ' the Government had created (the other being at Douglas, Isle of Man) and much the better of the two. Its inmates had great privileges and relative liberty. I had put my name on the list and then I had forgotten about it. After all I might yet be released - that is how I had come to think of that chance -and, meanwhile, I did not dislike my life here. The camp was, in its way, a curious and interesting place once one had got used to its obvious drawbacks. I have always been interested in human beings and here there were a great many types I should never have come in contact with under normal conditions. I was beginning to make a good many friends whose conversation and outlook on life were interesting and new to me; I liked the scenery and the air, and - last not least - this place had become familiar to me and I distrusted change. I was prepared to pass quite a pleasant summer here, as far as a summer could be pleasant while the war went on.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor © G Newton , 2018