TCD MS 3416 page 59
[June 1916]
you show a weak front he will bully you to his hearts content, and he also knows full well that the whiteman is his master, and is extraordinary sensitive to the fact. We were allowed out into the town in small parties with an escort to make purchases, and we learnt the proper prices of the usual necessities of life; the prices of these were very different later on when we were not allowed to buy anything except through our interpreter at the prices fixed by him! Our Mohammedan Indian officers were ordered to leave us here at Eskischehir and when saying good bye to them and wishing them luck – I asked the Subadhar what he thought of Turkey in general, knowing that the Mohammedan of India was apt to regard Turkey as an Utopia of Mohammedanism, the Sultan’s regime and the Caliphate as institutions second to none in holiness, and the population as an example of what a true and devout Mussalem ought to be. “Sahib” said he “their regiments are rabble with no discipline and no proper equipment, and they are all ‘budmarshes’: they eat tinned bully beef, drink wine and do not say their prayers, they have no ‘bundobust’,
Note: budumarsh = evil doer, bundobust = arrangement.