December 1948 11 experiment was very successful. We realise modern Games is to promote greater under­ that in certain cases mistakes were made standing among the youth of all nations, and and work was not altogether satisfactory, but Sir Frank, speaking personally, considers that we feel that with the experience of this this goal has been achieved. The 1948 Games year behind us, we can look forward to had been most successful, carried through much fine work being done in the coming with true British organisation and restraint. years. There was a great possibility that the Olympic —R. L. Sharwood, Games of 1956 or 1960 would be held in . Following this talk, Mr. Ted Best Assembhes showed the School two films, the first of Two special assemblies occurred at the end which was a general film on Olympics, giving of last term too late to be included in the highlights from various Games, and the Second Term issue of the Chronicle. second an athletics training film, giving in­ On 18th August David Richards, on behalf structions for sprints, hurdles and relays. of the Royal Lifesaving Society, presented The speaker on Friday 1st October was to the School the " Keith Cup", which Mr. Coates, O.B.E., senior surgeon at the had been won by the School Lifesaving Royal Melbourne Hospital, who has become Team. At the same assembly, Mr. Macfarlane known as "Coates of Thailand" for his magni­ presented the "Thomas Herford Cup", a ficent work among the Allied Prisoners of scouting award gained by the Wesley Troop. War in that country. After the fall of On 20th August, Mr. L. R. D. Pyke, an Malaya, Mr. Coates, the only surgeon among Old Boy and former master of this school, fifteen hundred men, was taken prisoner by and a Rhodes Scholar, spoke to us on the the Japanese and transported to a prison camp Mildura Branch of the Melbourne Uni­ in Burma, where he began his career as "the versity, of which at that time he was Acting guest of the Emperor" lasting for three and Dean. a half years. Although the majority of the Japanese guards were little better than From the outside, the Branch still looks animals in their habits and behaviour, Mr. very like an R.A.A.F. camp, with acres of Coates emphasised that there were a few galvanised iron, but great changes have been humane men amongst them, and that we made inside. The living quarters are quite cannot dismiss the Japanese as being entirely comfortable, although furnishing is rather a barbarian race. From this first camp Mr. austere. The beds are those used by the Coates was sent to the notorious Death R.A.A.F. and resemble Cyclone fences on Railway, where the colonel in charge of the legs. When you turn over in the middle of Allied slave-gangs (who has since lost his the night your bed plays tunes, and when head at the hands of the Allies) prophesied there are about ten beds in the hut you that the railway would be built over dead have quite a symphony concert. The working bodies. Mr. Coates, who himself contracted atmosphere of Mildura is usually very good, typhus, was left as the only doctor among end the ex-servicemen have established a fine two hundred sick men, most of whom were tradition of study. The climate of Mildura suffering from cholera. He was very greatly is dry, and on the whole far from being aided in his work by a Dutch medical orderly, "genial" as the Tourist Bureau suggests. who has since become Dutch Ambassador The assembly of Friday 24th September at Toronto. At the "55 Kilo" camp, there had quite an Olympic atmosphere, for we had was a serious outbreak of tropical ulcers, and with us three well-known Old Boys, two of Mr. Coates performed some one hundred and whom have participated in Olympic Games— twenty amputations. He used cocaine for Sir Frank Beaurepaire, M.P., three times Lord spinal injections, and sewed his patients up Mayor of Melbourne, who swam his way to with string. A Dutch chemist extracted im­ fame in three Olympic Games, winning 8 portant drugs from various waste products. World Championships, 11 English Champion­ At the end of 1944 he was taken down to the ships and 34 Australian; Mr. Ted Best, who Siam camp, and became chief medical officer has represented at Empire Games, for ten thousand men. His chief concern and who has held the Victorian Amateur through all these years was the lack of Championship for the 220 yards sprint; and supplies of food and drugs. Lack of necessary John Bartram, who ran in the Games vitamins was the fundamental cause of the of this year. Sir Frank outlined briefly the high sickness rate among his fellow-prisoners. history of the Olympics, records of whicli go Despite his constant "requests" to the back to 776 B.C. The expressed aim of the Japanese authorities only a slight improve-