Evening star., 1941-06-29
40 Directors Planning
To Organize Camp Into
Christian Community
Some Just Out of College;
One Hopes to Help in
Making Losting Peace
BY LOUIS NJ. LYONS,

This correspondent has just come
from the first concentration camp,
American style. to be opened in this
region. Conscientious oblectors
were freezing ice cream for their
first camp meal as We left. They
don't call it a concentration camp
but civilian public service camp"
The 40 youths here, half from
Boston suburbs. and some just out
OF Tufts, Boston University and
Harvard, are already planning 10
organize their camp into what their
Quaker leader calls "a cooperative
Christian community
Here these men who could not
find it in their hearts to accept
military service hope to train to-
gether TO make themselves more
effective laborers for peace in the
world
Forty hours week they must
work in the forest on fire protec-
ton, to complete the task Of tim
ber salvage for which the forest
camp was set up. But the rest of
their time they plan to devote to
developing the convictions that
brought them here.
Different From Last War.
They came with slim baggage OF
work clothes, but with heavy
freight of convictions TO which they
have clung against all the pressure
Of the society in which they live
Here in the first hours many shed
the Inconsistencies they have
felt as marked individuals, and hap
PLY found a fellowship of like
minded men. Men who for long
have stood alone. now stand to-
gether. and the difference is written
in their faces as soon as they make
acquaintance with the other fellows
who join them in fixing the screens
on the buildings and cleaning up
the camp site.
First arrivals heard Thomas E.
Jones, national director of these
camps for the American Friends
Service Committee, speak of the
difference in the last draft when
conscientious objectors were put in
prison or beaten up in camps. He
told the men they would need self
control because some of their COM
panions would be queer" and they
would have to learn to live with
them. Right here in Royslston, he
said, they could learn to practice
good neighborliness, so that the
local people who think OF them as
"a bunch of screwballs" will find
they are "the finest people in the
world" What they learn here about
being neighbors they can apply just
as easily to Mexico, Japan or Ger
many, he said.
Asked Longer Hours.
He spoke about another of these
camps, started q few weeks ago in
the Midwest, where the youths
petitioned to be allowed to work a
ga a-hour day instead Of eight hours.
so they could put swing crew out
to help the local farmers with their
having.
The director is a peach" said
Stanley H. Williamson of Jamaica
Plain, in short interview We had
on the roof of the camp dining
cabin. where he and Eugene E.
Collier of Somerville were exchang-
ing pacifist views as they screened
in the ventilator.
Williamson received his master of
arts degree in history at Boston
University last week. He's been a
pacifst five years. ever since he
worked on a peace poll taken by
his church - Congrega tional - he
said. Collier, tufts graduate who 8
been studying stenography in a
secretarial school till this week. said
he remembered working on the same
poll.
"A conscientious objector is under
lot of pressure" he says. "Espe-
cially economic pressure. I've got
IS to my name and owe my family
$1,000 for my education, and the
difference between getting paid s21
month in the Army and having
| to pay $35 month to come here
made me do a lot of thinking !
told my draft board might change
my mind, but they wouldn't have
me anyway. I think it's going to
be a good program here"
Hopes to Help Make Lasting Peace.
Charles Butcher, I'd, of Cambridge,
was business manager of the LAM
poon at Harvard two years ago.
He was business manager of st.
Marks School two days ago, and
teacher of mathematics there. He
came to camp with Julian Huxley s
latest book on peace in his bag, and
by the afternoon he was driving a
beach wagon to Athol to meet a
crowd up from New York on the
All train.
TT~,~,ar,ts A.