MISS KNOWLES AND HER WORK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 95, 18 April 1941, Page 42

MISS KNOWLES AND HER WORK

Helping Prisoners-Of-War

help," we often exclaim, and we find ourselv@ taking Red Cross classes and knitting socks. Miss Christine . Knowles translated her desire into action by founding "The British Prisoners-of-War Books . and Games Fund "-one of the most far-seeing and valuable of the voluntary organisations called into being by the war. Its function is to send out books, games and music to the prison camps of Germany, so that our men may be heartened and kept in touch with home. In the stress and strain of fighting, the claims of men out of the battle tend to be overlooked. But Miss Knowles is determined that not one of the prisoners shall be forgotten. She sits at her desk in a whitewalled office high above the London traffic surrounded by letters, personal files, music and gramophone records, resolved to leave nothing undone to mitigate the stagnant horror of a prison life. Books form the basis of the plan, for books provide the best means of keeping in touch. Each prison camp is, to begin with, supplied with a basic 1000 =e | DO want to do something to

books, not only novels, but history, philosophy and poetry. She’s Got Him On Her List Individual contacts are probably the most valuable as well as the most rewarding. There are 7000 men on Miss Knowles’s list, of those whose personal tastes have been ascertained. As soon as a British soldier is registered as a prisoner-of-war, his name goes to Miss Knowles. In her first parcel to him is included a post-card on which he can fill in his reading preferences, main interests and hobbies. Thus the man who wants to learn Spanish will receive a Spanish dictionary and grammar and the Spanish and English versions of perhaps a Pirandello play. The greatest demand is for

poetry, which offers the men escape from the war and their own surroundings; but there is also a considerable demand for technical literature. An engineer, for instance, can keep abreast of modern developments in his profession, so that his years of inactivity do not mean complete loss. Ironically, for many men, prison offers the first opportunity for prolonged reading which modern life allows. There are many other sides to this vital work. But this will suggest the value of the function performed by Miss Knowles and her small staff, They are caring for the minds and spiritual outlook of a whole unhappy section of the nation so that, lost though they may be to us for the duration of the war, the spirit of England shall go on growing within them until at last they come home, ready and equipped with the rest of us to take up the building of the new world.