These more fortunate times soon came to an end—for me at least. So long as they lasted they were not intolerable; and the various funds in aid of prisoners, and the companies of our fellow-countrymen and women (chiefly women!) who came to visit us, made captivity as amenable as it could be made. But one morning I was summoned to the Commandant’s office, and informed that I and some fifty others were to be sent that day to an internment camp at Frongoch in Wales. We were to be the first to arrive, and we were to take charge of the camp and order and regulate it for the remainder of the Irish Prisoners of War, who would arrive in detachments from Stafford, from Knutsford, from Perth, from Glasgow, from Wakefield, from Wandsworth, and from Lewes.

Such were the orders, and we were to be ready to leave in an hour’s time. But I had what [99]H. P. afterwards chaffingly alluded to as my “strategic illness.” Never till then did I admire the amazing insight and foresight of Dublin Castle.

I was in fact covered from head to foot with the proof of their perspicuity. And as a result all the detachments to Frongoch from Stafford were held back for three weeks to cover the period of infection.

Thus I spent nearly a fortnight in hospital in the company of an R.A.M.C. corporal who was isolated with me. He had been a Northumberland mines inspector, and we discussed the working of mines, their proprietorship and profits, and the virtues of Trades unions. Sometimes my friend the sergeant came and stood out of sight, and beyond infection, behind the door. He informed me that it had been discovered that I had written a book on Shakespeare, and that I was to be treated with respect accordingly. He seemed to be somewhat amused at this. But my corporal snorted with northern scorn, and declared that if I could not be treated with respect as a man, I should not [100]be treated with respect as a man who had written books. So, with one hand, one touched both ends of English society.

When I rose I was informed by the Commandant that I was not to rejoin the others. Since I had been ill, it appeared, instructions had been received that I and another were to be isolated. That other (H. P.) was already in a cell in the Crescent, where I was to be taken. He and I would be allowed to speak to one another whenever the staff arrangements permitted of it; but never, under any circumstances, were we to be allowed to communicate with the others. And, at the same time, he handed me my official order of internment, stating that according to regulations drafted for dealing with “aliens,” I was to be interned because I was “reasonably suspected of having favoured, promoted or assisted an armed insurrection against His Majesty.”

It was easy to see a craftier hand than that of the War Office at work in this. Yet, by isolating us they magnified us: a result, indeed, that the smallest wit could have foreseen. We were exercised together in the afternoon; and when, the first day, we passed within sight of the others they hailed us unitedly from the distance. [101]Thereafter we were not permitted to pass within sight of them.<............