Foreign News: People’s Week

This was the way 8,000,000 people in London lived their lives last week:

They burrowed underground like gophers, into damp shelters and subways where they slept on hard benches, on concrete floors or sitting upright like yogis. Those who had worked hard all day slept most easily. Chief bores were oldsters, who kept others awake chattering about the raids, and all those, young & old, who snored. Official “shelter shakers” moved about waking the snorers; and apartment-house porters became self-appointed Admirable Crichtons, supervising sleeping arrangements, moving furniture, brewing tea.

Into the shelters crowded Jews, Gentiles, pickpockets, lovers. Crime was non-existent in London last week, the lawless taking shelter with their victims. Burglar alarms, set off by concussion, rang aimlessly for hours. Love was almost as difficult, since there was no privacy in shelters and little time during the day. Snobbery survived. Better-dressed people in some apartment houses refused to enter shelters with the proletariat, insisted on sitting on back stairways.

Into the swank Savoy Hotel shelter, where guests can dine, dance and sleep, marched 50 ill-clad men & women with two children. Leading the pack was Phil Piratin, famed Hyde Park Communist orator. Two elegant Savoy directors, a constable and a Scotland Yard detective could not make them budge, but the stunt missed fire when the all clear sounded after only 13 minutes.

Nerves were still good in London last week, but they tightened with the sound of approaching planes. In shelters the tension could be felt as raiders droned overhead. When bombs struck near by, nerves were near the snapping point, but in few cases did they snap. They relaxed when the bombers droned away.

Out of the ground like gophers popped the people after the raids, to cheer their batteries and count fires. High roofs were in demand, and in one building a porter conducted five-minute tours to the roof. Delayed-action bombs killed some of the curious. Down Piccadilly one afternoon strolled a civilian with a bomb he thought was a dud and was carrying as a present for his wife. Another Piccadilly stroller on a bright moonlit night wore a black jacket and a black Eden hat, carried an umbrella sedately over his head against the shrapnel shower.

London’s animals lived as the people lived. Dogs & cats slept in shelters with their masters. Women rescued pups & kittens from bomb holes. A litter of rabbits was born in one hole, in the shadow of a delayed-action bomb. Many wild birds were killed. On one balcony were found a score of dead sparrows, huddled together with two mice in their midst.

Private cars helped to transport people to & from their work. They drove up to bus stops, offered free rides. Those which did not stop voluntarily were halted by the police.

Theatres were closed and cinemas shut at 9. Lights were off in many parts of London. Many places were without fuel. Food was served to the homeless by many volunteer organizations and nobody starved. The power plant of an East End meatpacking factory was bombed. Instead of letting five tons of meat spoil, the manager dumped it in a caldron, added vegetables, served stew to bombees. But an increasing number of London’s poor had no shelter but bomb shelters.

Babies were born in shelters, in busses, in cellars, on streets. Although there were 370,000 children still in London, only 350 registered for evacuation last week. As yet there was no wholesale evacuation of the world’s largest city.

Nor had war’s most dreaded scourge, pestilence, yet appeared. Germany claimed that influenza raged in London, that millions of rats swarmed the centre of the city. But the colds that came from sleeping underground were not influenza, and the rats had been there always. Most feared epidemic was typhoid, from water contamination after bombing of water mains and reservoirs, but the germination period of typhoid is almost two weeks, and London had been steadily bombed for only nine days at week’s end.

Night after night the bombers came, morning after morning London went to work redeyed. But London remained on the whole good-natured. The Times’s bridge correspondent complained a bit that the raids were “having a serious effect on bridge.” But a taxicab driver inserted an advertisement in the Times’s personal column apologizing for losing his temper during a raid.

There were even a few laughs. Joke of the week: “Hug the wall,” said a man when the bombs began to fall. Said a second man: “I’m practically a mural now.”

Unconsciously the German propaganda broadcasters provided the biggest laugh of the week. They frequently rehash British Air Ministry communiques for German consumption, and Air Ministry communiques sometimes end with the sentence: “Last night bombs were dropped at random.” Last week the Deutschlandsender was heard telling its German listeners: “In the suburb of Random damage has been caused by our bombers.”

Beyond either laughter or tears, and incredibly British, was a notice posted at a golf course outside London: Emergency Rule: Players may pick out of any bomb crater, dropping ball not nearer hole without penalty. Ground littered with debris may be treated as ground under repair.