TCD MS 3416 page 79
[November 1916]
of passing away the time of our confinement; in the evenings we sometimes played “Roulette” on a board which one of our number made, we could not employ the use of a marble since we had not the means of making the board correctly, so we contended ourselves by using a needle to indicate the winning number when the wheel ceased to spin. Some played poker, others bridge. Once a week we used to have a lecture; we were a mixed crowd, there being amongst our number, cowpunchers, engineers, tea planters and lawyers, in fact representatives of almost every vocation who had joined the Army “for the duration of the War”. We were therefore able to find some most accomplished lecturers who discoursed on many interesting subjects. In October we started a House Debating Society, we derived from our debates, which were never very serious, a fair amount of amusement; these cheerful evenings helped us, just for the moment to forget our dreary lives, and the Unspeakable Nation who were apparently doing their best to make life in general as irksome as possible for us. On Nov 4th Kaizim Bey, to our great surprise, paid his first proper