[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

IV SOME OF THE PEOPLE

WE were a motley crowd and there were some very surprising 'enemy aliens' amongst us ; we were, in fact, quite cosmopolitan. One great friend of mine bore the name of Schulz - about as uncommon in Germany as that of Smith is in England. Schulz was very fond of me because I was about the only person he could talk to, for Schulz knew no language except Spanish. He was born in Mexico and looked a full-blooded Mexican Indio, but his name was Schulz, and so he had been arrested on board some ship and brought here. His mother, he told me, was Indian, he had never known his father, but his mother thought his name was Schulz and called her son after him. I am sure the good lady's memory must have been at fault. Schulz did not know his age, but he looked about twenty and had a very handsome, sullen sort of face and a feline body. He wore a khaki shirt and riding-breeches which seemed an unusual outfit for a sailor, yet he was undoubtedly one for he exercised an art known to sailors only: all day long he sat on the ground and with a huge navaja he carved minute fullrigged ships which were miraculously introduced into bottles when finished. All other work he profoundly despised, nor did he attempt to sell his works of art ; he had no needs of any sort. I tried to impress the fact on him that it would be extremely easy for him to be set free if he would take the trouble to explain his case and ask to be put in touch with his consulate, but he had no desire for freedom. Life could be far worse than this, he remarked, and that was undoubtedly true. He was a very wise child really, he had no needs, demanded nothing from life, did not bother about his fellow-creatures or his surroundings. On the other hand he found great satisfaction in spitting frequently and adroitly: that was his way of expressing his opinion on the universe and on mankind.

Then there was an extremely black negro whose presence remained a mystery until Charlie managed to solve it. He discovered that the man knew Arabic, and got him to explain. He had been arrested on board a ship, and when asked his nationality had replied that he was a faithful son of the Caliph. That was all he knew, for the notion of nationality was unknown to uneducated Mahometans. The Caliph was, of course, the Sultan of Turkey, so he was imprisoned as a Turkish enemy alien. As a matter of fact he was an Egyptian and therefore (at that time) a British subject. Charlie explained this to him and got very excited about his case, but not so the negro ! He only shook his head and said he knew what he had got but not what he might get, and Allah had ordained things for the best. White men, as is well known, are free from such fatalistic superstition, that is why' Yankee ' behaved very differently from these exotics. Yankee belonged to the rich, according to him to the fabulously wealthy. I don't know how he came to be there, I believe he had no papers or insufficient ones. He was such a very typical son of the U.S.A. that the mistake seemed ludicrous. He did not know a word of German, had never been near that country, and had no sympathy with it whatsoever. In fact he loathed it now that the sinking of the Lusitania had landed him in this predicament. Nor was his opinion of the British very high just then. Yankee had a little of the Indian in his face and make, he was about twenty-five or so, tall, with lanky black hair, and disguised as a sort of cowboy, probably in order to demonstrate his Americanism. He wore silk shirts though. Mostly he was in a hell of a temper and extremely blasphemous - which was after all comprehensible - but he had a sense of humour all the same and told endless American jokes most of which were utterly silly. He lay all day full length in the sun and tried to sleep; then someone would tickle him and he would swear gorgeously. He got his release after a month and people were sorry to lose him. He had become quite popular.

The pride of our heart, however, remained with us Billie. Billie was twenty-two, but looked eighteen and the most typical English boy one could find anywhere. Which is exactly what he was. He was just a jolly English schoolboy with an irresistible smile who quite saw the fun of the situation. He could not speak a word of any language but English, and as to Germany he hardly knew it existed. He had never seen a German before he came to Knockaloe, but he made friends with everyone and was adored by most, certainly by all the 90 per cent. who-as everywhere throughout the warwere bad ' haters.' Billie's parents had emigrated to Australia when he was quite a little boy, and they had died out there. He had studied architecture and was passing his summer holiday in Europe. When war broke out he was in Belgium and came to England at once - without a passport, for before the war hardly anyone ever troubled to take out a passport, and even less to take one with him when travelling. Billie landed in Southampton and thought some of the buildings of that port quite interesting. So he started sketching them, and was promptly arrested, for the interesting buildings happened to be part of the fortifications. He had no papers, so the authorities decided he could only be a German. I imagine that even they must have thought him and his sketching too naive for a spy, but a German he would remain until he could prove another nationality, and so there he was amongst his 'compatriots.' He hoped to get his papers from Australia very soon, he told me, he had already waited ten months for them, meanwhile he intended to remain cheerful and did not despair of organizing football in the camp. Billie was not only popular on account of his charming smile, but also as a living proof of the utter lack of sense of the British authorities-which everyone felt they had shown in his own case as well-and because his presence consoled people in a way, for what could you expect if even Billie had been locked up ! - I have often wondered if his papers ever arrived or what became of him.

One did not, however, have to turn to our ' exotics ' to discover curious samples of humanity, plenty were to be found amongst those of undisputedly German nationality. The most striking figure of our crowd was a man who called himself Dr. A and was born in Berlin. He was an absolutely perfect example of the bolshevik of popular imagery, a bolshevik avant la lettre, for in 1915 their existence was unknown to the world or, at any rate, the term meant nothing. It meant a good deal to this man, however, for he knew them all and corresponded with them, I believe. Before being interned he had, or said he had, lived in a sort of communist settlement in England. He was tall and very thin, he stooped and he had masses of untidy black hair covering his head and face. He looked like an unkempt and a little starved Assyrian king. His clothes, however, were not royal, for he invariably wore a pair of old trousers over a bathing-suit, and sandals. He would, in fact, have looked smartly dressed at Juan les Pins in the summer season of 1930, but in 1915 and in Knockaloe his was considered a scandalous get-up by nearly all his fellow prisoners. The doctor was an ardent revolutionary and he began his incendiary propaganda the very first day, which soon made him the best hated man there. The capitalist class was as furious with him, as might have been expected, but the majority did not take kindly either to his sharp tongue, his hissing and cutting voice, and his excessively Jewish appearance. As a convinced pacifist he condemned war and all the belligerents, no matter on which side they fought. He refused to make concessions to sentiment or patriotism; he was much too uncompromising and severe to gain popular applause. Strange to say, his only admirers were some very fair, very teutonic sailors - at least it seemed very strange to me at the time, but when the revolution in Germany started by a sailors' revolt I began to see the connection between the two types, which in spite of all differences have one fundamental thing in common: love of independence. One very young, flaxen-haired sailor-boy never left the doctor's side, and listened mute and adoring to all he said; I called him the John of this strange Christ who was perhaps more of a St. Paul. One could not help admiring his logic and his courage. He preached revolution by violence in all countries and was firmly convinced of the victory of communism, all of which seemed fantastic nonsense in 1915. Nor was the world he prophesied the one his hearers wished to look forward to. After victory and peace everyone was going to be happy and prosperous - that is what they hoped for (in common with the vast majority of people in all countries) and that is what they wished to hear. Some men - one never knew who they were - complained to the Commandant about the doctor's political speeches and meetings which, they said, created unrest in the camp. The Commandant sent for him and this is how the revolutionary described the interview: ' He looked at me, my beard, my naked shoulders, etc., with great disgust and said: "Do you consider this the proper costume to appear in here? " I said : " Certainly, why not? " He got furious and shouted: " You look like a wild beast," and I said, "You have put me in a cage like a wild beast, haven't you? " After that he laughed and said, "Well, there is something in that."' He was transferred to another compound and so I lost sight of him, but I came across him again in 1918.

Another man I had noticed from the very beginning was one of the great number of Russo-Polish Jews from the East End, who were either born in the Polish provinces then forming part of Austria or Germany, or else were considered German on account of their names. In many cases they themselves were none too sure about their origin. This was a very small old man who looked more worn and weatherbeaten than anything animate or inanimate I have ever seen. He was short, crooked and hunchbacked, wore a discoloured-looking red beard, and his skin looked like wrinkled parchment. His head leant against his right shoulder which made him look like a pensive crow. He wore a cutaway coat green with age and the remnants of a huge bowler hat, the crowning glory of which had almost departed. He was a passionate card-gambler like all his lot, and they spent their days quarrelling vociferously over very greasy cards, but he was also a very pious and strictly orthodox Jew as they all were. In fact, he was a hero, for for weeks on end he would only touch bread and water, and nearly starved. He and his friends were then transferred to a Kosher camp and the ' East End ' disappeared from our community, which thereby lost much of its picturesqueness. But I had made his acquaintance long before that time. One could always find him at the pump before and after his 'meals,' muttering to himself incessantly while he performed the ablutions prescribed by the Law of Moses. Its followers must cleanse themselves before eating and after, and nothing would have made him shirk this obligation, so he held out a few fingers of first one hand and then the other, and sprinkled a few drops of water on them. To this cleansing rite he almost ran, all other cleansing he dispensed with and despised. Having exchanged a few remarks with him I asked him the usual question: ' What was your profession before you were interned?', for on that subject they all liked to discourse at length. His answer was: ' I watch corpses.' According to orthodox Jewish rite a corpse is honoured by watchers surrounding it until the time of the funeral, a pious duty performed by the nearest relatives. I did not know that professional watchers of that sort existed, but they do amongst the orthodox poor, for there may be no relatives or they may not have time to honour the dead for days. A very terrible profession it seemed to me, and one which no doubt only the poorest of the poor adopted. So I said with what I thought was tactful sympathy: ' That is not a very cheerful life for you, I am afraid.' His head quite touched his shoulder as he looked up at me angrily. ' Not cheerful, what do you mean by not cheerful ? - I like it ! ' He turned to go, but thought better of it ; he came quite near to me and said almost triumphantly as it were: ' I like to do the talking. They don't talk back.' After which this most Shakespearean character I have come across in my life left me and restarted his endless muttered monologue.

In those early days of imprisonment there was far more mutual tolerance than in later times when people's nerves were edged and frayed. Later it would have been impossible for men of such different classes and customs, for such contradictory types to live together almost peaceably, but in 1915 there was as yet no sense of duration, internment was looked on as an abnormal episode, not as a mode of existence of possibly endless length. In 1915 people were still full of hope and convinced that the war was approaching its end. If they did not really believe - as some of them professed to - that a huge fleet of Zeppelins was coming to liberate all the prisoners, they were sure that the fall of Warsaw which had just taken place was the beginning of the end. And anyone who would not share that conviction was looked on with great disfavour, if not suspicion.

Discussion

Cohen comments on the loss of the 'East End' contingent to a kosher camp - this would appear to be the group of 80 transferred from Knockaloe to Douglas on the 15th July many of whom are noted as Jewish in the Douglas register.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor HTML© F Coakley , 2021