TURNED TO PROFIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22917, 21 December 1937, Page 16

TURNED TO PROFIT

CAPTIVITY IN WAR STUDY IN SPARE TIME OBJECT LESSON TO OTHERS [BY TELEGRAPH —OWN CORRESPONDENT J WELLINGTON, Monday 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 the Hon. T. \\ . White, Commonwealth Minister of Trade and Customs, in a short talk to pupils of the Hutt Valley High School. Mr. White, who was a lieutenantcolonel, said ho was a prisoner in the camp, whore for the first year there ivero 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 2UO 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 eonscripted and was against war, but, after 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 in tho camp. He (Mr, 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. Later this man became Vice-Consul at Constantinople and he was now Vice-Ambassador at Athens. No doubt he would go on to greater things. Another officer prisoner in the same camp who used tho time to study was now Governor-General of Burma. Others achieved distinction —ono 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 they 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 stroncly 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.