GREAT BRITAIN: Blitzbusiness

The measure of British sang-froid and the “business as usual” spirit in London was shown last week by a crowd of several hundred women shoppers. They staged a hectic bargain rush in one of the big West End stores at the very moment when scores of firemen were digging through tons of debris in the same store in frantic efforts to release 200 clerks entombed in the basement night before by a bomb.

In swank Mayfair shops, “National Topcoat Week” followed “National Fur Week” and autumn buying continued brisk. Enough timid shoppers stay at home to have doubled the business of London mail-order firms since break of World War II, but a daily tide of some 5,000 shoppers and window-gazers flowed down Oxford Street last week. Most ignored air-raid alarms until German bombers were actually overhead and they dawdled and browsed over displays of goods ticketed “For Christmas,” in no hurry to pick out presents. Outside famed Peter Robinson’s, housewives queued up in a long line to get such “Bomb Bargains” as five-guinea ($21) gowns marked down to two pounds ($8) and “Bomb-Soiled Aertex Jumpers” almost given away at sixpence (10¢).

Main cause of diminution in the volume of British retail trade has been not so much German bombs as the result of British efforts to convert certain industries to war use and to export the largest possible quantity of goods. Dec. i was set as the deadline after which British retailers will be able to get no more silk stockings from British wholesalers. Result: this week every silk-lingerie counter in London was the scene of wild scrambles. Some shops set the limit at one dozen pairs to a customer.

Meanwhile, female workers in a large Derbyshire plant petitioned the directors to let them go stockingless —hitherto considered “not done” in the shires — and promised if this plea was granted to put $5,000 yearly of “stocking money” into national savings. That the Government must use drastic means to keep exports as high as possible was evident from the latest British trade figures released last week. These showed September 1940 exports were valued at £31,000,000 ($124,000,000) and imports at £80,000,000 ($320,000,000); whereas the figures for September 1939 were: exports £23,000,000 ($92,000,000) and imports £50,000,000 ($200,000,000). That such enormous quantities of goods still moved in & out of British ports, long since “rendered use less” according to the propaganda of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, was a great military triumph. But on the economic battlefield it was grave that Britain’s adverse balance has risen from £27,000,000 ($108,000,000) per month to £49,000,000 ($196,000,000).

Over half a million camp beds for use in home shelters have now been sold in London alone and “Blitzbachelors” (husbands who have sent their wives to the country for safety) are doffing British decorum to sleep nightly in the narrow family shelters on cots beside the cots of their housemaids. A bomb last week ripped the side wall off a Mayfair mansion of stately appearance, revealed it to have been one of London’s most sumptuously equipped bagnios. The walls were covered with erotic frescos rivaling those of Pompeii, and a giggling crowd soon gathered on the sidewalk to ogle the pictures while gruff, prim London bobbies kept growling all day “Move along, there! That’s it, move right along.

” “Must a bombed-out citizen continue to pay rent?” was the question London tenants’ associations busily prepared to agitate before the courts last week while landlords’ associations rebutted: “Since the landlord is compelled to continue paying taxes, even on premises rendered useless by bombs, the tenants obviously must continue to pay their rents.”

Judges, quite as much as shopkeepers, continued “business as usual” under the Blitz. A bomb heavily damaged one of the London police courts last week, but as soon as chunks of debris had been shoveled out of the main courtroom, the magistrate resumed trial of usual petty police-court cases — drunkenness, pocket-picking, etc. A 74-year-old widow, Mrs. Amelia Graham, was hauled into Hendon Police Court on a drunken-driving charge. She proved that her physician was having her take a tablespoonful of whiskey every two hours to steady her nerves against the Blitz, notwithstanding was fined $80. One Alfred Jack Perry, 34, was arraigned at Stratford-on-Avon for walking past a time bomb against police orders. “This was sheer obstinacy!” boomed the mag istrate, fined Jack $8.

Saddest case of the week was the conviction on looting charges of four of Britain’s heroic “suicide-squad” helpers of Captain Robert Davies, famed for his safe removal of a delayed-action bomb from in front of St. Paul’s (TIME, Sept. 30). Obliged to give the four hero-looters sentences of nine months at hard labor, the magistrate observed: “I am awfully sorry.”

Lloyd’s insurance underwriters set the prime example of “Big Business as usual” last week. The 200 sleek, well-dressed underwriters and their 5,000 employes had moved down 60 feet into a $200,000 steel & Concrete sub-basement under Lloyd’s which was used until break of war for storing records. In this huge and bustling shelter a barbershop, quick-lunch counter, tobacco stand and theatre-ticket bureau functioned busily.

Sandwichmen ambled about London last week advertising such shows as the new Dorothy Dickson musical Diversion, and book shops reported brisk autumn trade in P. G. Wodehouse’s latest, Quick Service. (Author Wodehouse was still interned in occupied France.) Battle, the Hugh Martin biography of Winston Churchill, and Son John Kennedy’s Why England Slept also sold well. Father Joe Kennedy winged home across the Atlantic last week (see p. 19) and after he left London it was announced that recently the U. S. Embassy suffered some slight bomb damage. The staff, in addition to nursing along some 700 U. S. citizens who now want to get out of Britain, having previously passed up the chance, prepared a report on the extent of Nazi bomb damage to British livestock. Sheep, chiefly because they huddle together when bombers approach, have been among the worst British livestock sufferers, while individualistic pigs have scattered headlong, mostly to live and squeal another day.