INTERNATIONAL: Light

This week hundreds of thousands of London children will see a wonder they have never seen before (or cannot remember seeing)—a lighted city. This week the lights will go on again in London. They will not all go on, yet—but the five years (1,843 nights) of total blackout will be over.

The buzz-bombs have stopped coming too. With gigantic strides the war was moving back where it came from—Europe. Britons were stirred, in different ways. An anonymous London Times poet wrote: “We thank thee, London, for thy constancy, There’s not a heart today but to thee

draws” So speak the voices, and I love their

thanks. What now are weedy courts and shrines

forlorn?

Does not my Thames between his seaward banks Flow all the prouder this September

morn?

A less-emotional Yorkshireman, Professor Thomas Edmund Jessop of Hull University, wagged a warning finger at possible postwar nerves. Said he: “The only salvation of the English people may be their traditional phlegmatic attitude toward events. . . . The machine is going too fast for the average human mind and the strain may prove too great.”

Standing at his window the night that World War I began, Sir Edward Grey had said: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life time.”

Britain was still Britain, but Sir Edward Grey’s times were gone forever. He had been right; but in London, at least, the lights were coming on again at last.

Food

Hey, Yank,

Got a franc?

Hey, chum,

Got some gum?

Big-eyed, bony Belgian children had learned enough English last week to chant such rhymes to Tommies and G.I.s, who tossed them chewing gum, hard candy, field rations. But what the youngsters needed was milk and oranges. Some 50% of them had rickets.

The Belgian children were not the worst off in Western Europe’s unfolding malnutrition chart. The farther the Allied troops advanced, the hungrier they found the population. Imported food was a necessity. Food was also politics, for the lack of food could lead to unrest and delay Europe’s rehabilitation.

To many an Allied observer, fresh from belt-tightened Britain, Europe’s farms looked unexpectedly lush and prosperous, Europeans looked surprisingly healthy and well-fed. Much of the appearance was misleading. In Western Europe, the well-to-do had enough to eat. But among the poorer population, particularly in the city slums, there was not enough food. Nowhere did the liberators see starvation. But constant semi-starvation and diet deficiencies were leaving their mark on a whole European generation.

Horse Meat Helps. Almost half of France’s newborn babies were underweight, and the child death rate had increased by 25%. Tuberculosis deaths were up 51%. The Germans had drained off dairy products, livestock (a quarter of France’s cattle, a third of her draft animals), huge quantities of wine (for the Wehrmacht: 60,000 bottles of champagne daily—though the Germans, who did not know enough to specify the vintage years, did not get the best). Last week in towns where retreating Germans left dead horses on the street, the inhabitants eagerly butchered the carcasses (see cut).

In Italy the U.S. and Britain had already distributed $100,000,000 worth of food and other supplies. It was not enough. To Washington from Rome hurried the Allied Control Commission’s Economic Chief, Brigadier General William O’Dwyer. He brought with him some harrowing statistics: Italy’s infant mortality was up four times since the last prewar year; her general mortality rate had doubled within a year, her tuberculosis rate had tripled. The average Italian, never a Falstaff. had lost five to ten pounds in weight.

UNRRA had its work cut out for it.