"Even darkness which may be felt." London by night now makes one understand the feelings of the Egyptians. You cannot con~ ceive what it is like to make your way along, the most familiar street in the nightly black out, You feel for the kerb, pushing your feet like a blind man. You grope for walls, you see nobody, but voices are heard plain= tively asking the way. To cross the road is fa real terror as you can scarcely see the bbuses till they are on you and they cannot see you at all. Accidents are frequent.
'That there must be some relaxation is generally agreed, Paris, much nearer to German aeroplanes than' we are, has much ight and liberty to amuse itself in familiar ways, until 11 pan, when everything must shut.' Blue lamps with heavy top shades (as in the last war) would enable us to get about freely without the reflections on the sky which normally make London visible 50 miles away. And if a raid threatened, they could be switched off in a second.
Where is a yood deal of grumbling at the continued closure of all theatres and cine-BS." in a characteristic letter to the calls it a "master stroke of imaginative stupidity," reminding us that in the last war London had some 80,000 soldiers fon leave every night to be amused. "What agent of Chancellor Hitler is it he asks "who thas suggested that we should all cower in darkness and terror for the duration' Already it is pointed out in several quarters that, with nothing open but the pubs people are beginning to drink too much, Well they must do something.
Il is understandable that the Government should wish to drill us all for a few weeks, fon the principle adopted in hospitals of try= ing to break a probationer's heart in the first six months so that she may afterwards find the hardest nursing duty a rest cure. But the worst of war is the opportunity it gives to pompous nobodies in Whitehall or tin hat to imagine themselves the Government and put upon inoffensive citizens, For example the A.R.P. regulations and some of ils wardens. In our village, a safely zone observe, to which hundreds of children have been evacuated, every one of those un= happy little kids must carry a gas-mask even it he only wanders a few yards down the Jane to pick blackberries. Probably 50 per cent, of those masks are ruined already. And today a friend, whose wife Is at Littlehamp~ ton with their two small granddaughters, told me that a special policeman came to her fon the beach and asked very brusquely "Why have those children no gas-masks T write as if we were all grumbling, which is not at all so, Anything finer, more, tran: quil, more cheerful than the great "B. today could not be imagined. Bul criticisms re heard and they are justified. The Minis~ {ry of Information has been strongly attacked ith in Press and Parliament. As the vening, Standard" reminds it, it is there to give information not to suppress it. Obviously there are many things which cannot be disclosed, Ike the number of submarines sunk, But on others the public are entitled to know and it is far better that they should.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.