The second great fact which is likely to strike a traveller in Britain is the immensity of the recent shifts in population. The British people used to be static—at least, by American standards—but the war has aused tremendous displacements. While no figures are given by tne Government, it is clear that a great proportion of the 47,000,000 people have changed their homes. Part of the movement is military. Vast Army camps are scattered over the land and the soldiers are frequently shifted.
A large part of the population movement is a resuit of the bombing. The evacuation of highly dangerous areas has been as far as possible kept on a voluntary basis, but it has involved prodigious shifts. The semideserted look of great areas of West London—Mayfair, Kensington, Bays-weter, Chelsea—is as depressing as the actual destruction. Newspapermen told me that at least a milieu people, possibly two millions, had left the city.
The result has been a huge expansion of the populations of safer places like Winchester. Reading, Salisbury, Bath, Exeter, "Gloucester, Oxford, York and Durham. Sometimes the worried people of these towns exaggerate it but frequently it causes painful congestion.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.