WAR-TIME ESCAPES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 17

WAR-TIME ESCAPES

Recently the 8.8.C. arranged with certain famous escapers to describe their war-time adventures in a series of talks. It is these talka that with two additions are now published in "Escapers All.?' The escapes are preceded by an introduction, in which Captain J. B. Aekerley calls attention to certain features, that are common to them and also to certain distinctions in kind. He lias it that "the.urge to escape sprang from something much deeper than physical conditions—it-sprang from a very deep human instinct indeed—the need ,for self-expression." And he meets the objection that there were so few who attempted to ;break prison by contending that the vast majority of prisoners concentrated on ways oi escape that were mental—on reading, writing, or learning languages.

. A successful escape required the solution of three problems—breaking camp, reaching the frontier and crossing it. Each was addressed to some special quality;" and in Germany, which is the setting for many of the narratives, -what ' was primarily needed ■ for the first was ingenuity; for the second endurance; for the-'thirdj let us say, resolution—for fortune favours the brave, and crossing frontiers appears, from these stories, to have'been, largely a matter of luck.' Of the escapera three were Germans, the rest British. The reader wishes them all well irrespective of nationality.