USE OF SPARE TIME

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 73, 20 December 1937, Page 5

USE OF SPARE TIME

Experiences In Turkish

War Prison

How officers in a Turkish concentration camp in Central Asia Minor, who took advantage of their imprisonment to study, later became distinguished men, was related by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. T.'W. White, Commonwealth Minister of Trade and Customs, in a short talk to pupils of the Hutt Valley High School Colonel White said he was a prisoner in the camp where for the first year there were no books or writing materials. It seemed then that their starvation for books was greater than that they felt from shortage of food. Some of the 200 allied officers who were there determined to profit by their enforced idleness by studying. One of the officers was a tinsmith’s apprentice before the war. He had been conscripted and was against war, but, attcr going into the army, thought he might as well make a good job of it and became an officer. He learned French, Turkish, and Arabic m the camp. He (Colonel White) escaped through Russia, and the next time he saw the ex-tinsmith’s apprentice he was rowing for Cambridge, being a student at Pembroke College, where he was qualifying in Arabic. Uater thl . s man became Vice-Consul at Constantinople and was now Vice-Ambassador at Athens. No doubt he would go on to greater things. Another officer prisoner in the same camp who used the time to study was now Governor-General of Burma. Others achieved distinction—one being Yeats Brown, the author. Those men who “grizzled” and growled in the concentration camp came out the worse for it in comparison with the men who found something useful to do. It was the same with unemployed men who grumbled and groaned instead of using idle time to Qualify for another vocation where thev might have a better chance of work. He urged the pupils not to cease their studies when they left school, but to continue them right on into manhood. Those who were not entering professions he strongly advised to learn skilled trades. The fear that machines would displace men had been proved wrong and there would always be work for skilled tradesmen.