e were caged animals, but no insults were offered us. Rather,
the women showed us kindness and passed us sweetmeats and strange
food through the fence until an officer came and stopped them with
overbearing words. Then, presently, there was a new change.

A week had gone and we were feeling better, standing about and
looking at the freshly fallen snow, marking the straight tracks made
by the sentries outside the fence, and thinking of home maybe, when
new developments commenced.

Telegrams translated into Punjabi were nailed to the door of a hut,
telling of India in rebellion and of men, women and children
butchered by the British in cold blood. Other telegrams stated that
the Sikhs of India in particular had risen, and that Pertab Singh,
our prince, had been hanged in public. Many other lies they posted
up. It would be waste of time to tell them all. They were
foolishness--such foolishness as might deceive the German public,
but not us who had lived in India all our lives and who had received
our mail from home within a day or two of our surrender.

There came plausible men who knew our tongue and the argument was
bluntly put to us that we ought to let expediency be our guide in
all things. Yet we were expected to trust the men who gave us such
advice!

Our sense of justice was not courted once. They made appeal to our
bellies--to our purses--to our lust--to our fear--but to our
righteousness not at all. They made for us great pictures of what
German rule of the world would be, and at last I asked whether it
was true that the kaiser had turned Muhammadan. I was given no
answer until I had asked repeatedly, and then it was explained how
that had been a rumor sent abroad to stir Islam; to us, on the other
hand, nothing but truth was told. So I asked, was it true that our
Prince Pertab Singh had been hanged, and they told me yes. I asked
them where, and they said in Delhi. Yet I knew that Pertab Singh was
all the while in London. I asked them where was Ranjoor Singh all
this while, and for a time they made no answer, so I asked again and
again. Then one day they began to talk of Ranjoor Singh.

They told us he was being very useful to them, in Berlin, in daily
conference with the German General Staff, explaining matters that
pertained to the intended invasion of India. Doubtless they thought
that news would please us greatly. But, having heard so many lies
already, I set that down for another one, and the others bec