The Woman of Knockaloe: A Parable

by Sir Hall Caine

Christmas comes, the second Christmas, then spring, the second spring. Mona watches the life of the camp with loathing. Rising in the grey of the morning, she sees the prisoners ranging round their compounds like beasts in a cage, and on going to bed in the dark she sees the white light of the arc-lamps which have been set up at the far corners of the camp to prevent their escape during the night. She hears of frequent rioting, rigorously put down, and then of an attempt at insurrection in the messroom of the First Compound and of four prisoners being shot down by the guard. Serve them right! She has no pity.

She overhears the guards talking of indescribable vices among the men of the Third Compound and then of terrible punishments. Her work sometimes requires that she should pass this compound, and as often as she does so she becomes conscious that behind the barbed wires the men are looking at her with evil eyes and laughing like monkeys. Her flesh creeps—she feels as if they were stripping her naked. The beasts! The monsters!

One sunny morning in the early summer Mona is awakened by the loud boom of a gun from the sea. Looking out she sees a warship coming to anchor in the bay. Later she sees great activity in the officers’ quarters and hears that the Home Secretary has come from London to make an inspection of the camp and that the Commandant has sent for the Governor. Still later she sees the three going the rounds of the compounds. Towards noon they pass the farm on their way to the Commandant’s dining-room, and, the kitchen window being open, Mona hears what the stranger, who looks angry, is saying:

“What can you expect? Shut men up like dogs and what wonder if they develop the vices of dogs! The only remedy is work, work, work.”

A few days after that the joiners and bricklayers are building workshops all over the camp and within a month there is the sound of hammering and sawing and planing from inside these places, as if the prisoners were working. Mona laughs. They will never turn these creatures into human beings—never!

Autumn comes and the fields outside the camp are waving yellow and red to the harvest, but the Manx boys, nearly all that are worth anything, are away at the war, and the farmers are saying the corn will lie down uncut and rot on the ground if they cannot get help to gather it.

One night she hears that the better-behaved of the prisoners are to be sent out to the neighbouring farms to work at the harvesting, and next morning she sees a batch of them going off with their guard, down the avenue and through the gates.

“There’ll be trouble coming of this,” she thinks. “Such men are not to be trusted.”

Inside a month the camp is ringing with a scandal. The letters arriving at the camp for the prisoners have always been examined by censors. Most of the letters have come from friends in their own country, but now it is found that some are from Manx girls, who, having met with German prisoners while working on the land, have struck up friendships. One of these girls has written to tell her German lover that she is in “trouble” and that the wife of her master is turning her out. Her name is Liza Kinnish.

Mona’s anger is unbounded. The slut! She has a brother at the war too! Mona has no pity for such creatures. While their boys out there at the front are fighting and dying for them they are carrying on at home with these German reptiles! Serve them right, whatever the disgrace that falls on them!