The Press: The War Effort of N. Gubbins

Shy, pawky, pink-faced Nathaniel Gubbins lives with his buxom, red-topped wife, his two daughters, and assorted animals in a cozy house in Surrey which he calls “The Nest.” Each week, an army of Britons (including Winston Churchill) regularly read Nat Gubbins’ column “Sitting on the Fence” in Lord Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express. There Britain’s most popular columnist sets out, through various mouthpiece characters (including himself) his often tart, always British comments on his life and hard times.

Last week, in the wake of the British Government’s White Paper (“Statistics Relating to the War Effort of the United Kingdom”; TIME, Dec. 11),Gubbins published a White Paper of his own: “Statistics Relating to the War Effort of N. Gubbins, Esq., his Life Partner, Sally the Cat, and Six Hens at The Nest.” Excerpts:

“It may now be revealed that from September 1939 up to September 1944 he has written 520,000 words, all original and all extremely funny, often in the worst possible circumstances. Sometimes they have been written with influenza during all-night air raids, and sometimes with just influenza. In the winter they have been written with no coal . . . and in the summer either in a cloud of wasps or (as in the summer of 1944) in a cloud of wasps and a nonstop bombardment by flying bombs. During the raids there was the ever-present anxiety that the local [pub] had been hit, thus cutting the last link with civilization. This anxiety entailed frequent visits to the local to check up on where the last bomb dropped, causing a serious loss in man-hours and a vast expenditure of money which might have gone into war savings.

“In addition to this N. Gubbins, Esq., spent four and a half years in the Home Guard, crawling about on his stomach in summer dust and winter snow, learning the parts of machine guns and learning how to fire rockets at enemy aircraft. . . . He thinks it is [now] safe to say that he still knows very little about either.

“Food and Clothing. The only additions to the weekly ration . . . were vegetables grown in the garden and the eggs provided by six hens known to readers of this column as the Six Little Suckers. The Six Little Suckers now at The Nest are not the original Suckers. Some have died of layers’ cramp, some have been killed by dear little doggies, and some, weary of their concentration camp and disgusting food, have committed suicide by wedging their heads into the wire netting and twisting their own necks. But apart from the few who took the coward’s way out, tribute must be paid to those who have carried on. . . . They have produced in four years more than 600 eggs. Of these at least 50 have been eaten by rats or squashed by the darling feet of dear little doggies. . . .

“It may be noted here that apart from all the other hardships endured by women in this war the small humiliations of shopping have been the most difficult to bear. N. Gubbins, Esq. can remember a day when his life partner smiled up into the face of a butcher and begged for a bone to make some soup. When he replied : ‘I believe you had a bone a fortnight ago. There are other people who want bones besides you,’ there were murmurs of approval from other women in the shop and the life partner of N. Gubbins, Esq., retired in confusion. . . .

“N. Gubbins, Esq., has bought only one new suit of clothes since 1938, and may now be regarded as the worst-dressed man in Britain. . . .

“Kitten Power in the war against vermin: . . . The achievement of Sally the Cat, producing kittens to deal with this menace, are worth noting. . . . Production remained at a fairly steady level of three litters a year . . . averaging 2% kittens a litter. . . . This is regarded as a war effort far exceeding that of. any other belligerent cat in the Allied camp and may be favorably compared to the output of Katinka Pusskin, champion mother cat of Russia and Heroine of the Soviet Union.

“Expenditures: … Of these, income tax was by far the greatest, though as the price of alcohol increased, the expenditure on this pardonable indulgence in wartime was in clanger of reaching the income-tax level. . . . It was observed that the consumption of alcohol by N. Gubbins, Esq., increased during air raids. . . . It was also noticed that the rate of consumption was highest when the alert was sounding and lowest when the all-clear was heard. . . .”