THE YPRES TIMES
133
Do you remember London during the warsay in 1917? Silent, ghostly streets,
except in the amusement quartersdilapidated housesunpainted shopfrontsno
fountains in Trafalgar Squarenever a window-box anywhere.
The petrol shortage? 'Buses were scarce and packed to suffocation; taxicabs were
pearls of price, and their drivers were gentlemen who took full advantage of the possi
bilities of the economic situation. (Thirty shillings it cost to hire him for dinner and
theatre in the evening, as many a subaltern home on leave discovered.)
Do you remember, too, the private limousines, with great flopping balloon-like
gasbags on top, which fed coal-gas direct into the engine in place of petrol? (You
could often purchase a lift on one of these if the chauffeur was by himself.)
Do you remember the food shortage? In normal times 50,000 tons of food from
abroad are landed in this country every day. How impossible it seemed at that time
that we could escape national starvation; yet somehow the Navyand Lord Rhondda's
ration-cardspulled us through.
Restaurants and eating-houses did a roaring trade, for it was easier to expend a
coupon on a plate of beef than queue up at a butcher's shop.
Have a nice sole, sir; fish is only half a coupon." Try a slice of ham, sir;
that's not rationed at all just now."
And we finished every scrap of food on our plates We had healthy appetites
in those days, chiefly because we all had something to do. Doctors will tell you that
fashionable ailmentsthe ailments of self-indulgencedied out almost entirely during
the war.
Do you remember the night life? Every theatre crammed with a roaring audience
in khaki. Violet Loraine? George Robey? The streets outside dimmed down almost
to invisibility, and an air-raid during the performance a perfectly usual occurrence.
On these occasions it was a point of honour, with the anti-aircraft guns barking
all round London, that the audience should keep their seats and the actors carry on.
Or perhaps one should say actresses, for in most of the shows there was a plethora of
girls and an almost entire absence of men of military age. It was a great time for the
fifty-year-old chorus man.
Do you remember our women in the war? The curiously-named Waacs and
Wrens and Wrafs? The munition-workers, with their faces stained bright orange
colour by picric acid? Honourable scars indeed. Do you remember Winnie the
Window-cleaner," and others of her racethe women 'bus-conductors and railway
workers? I recall in a tiny Scottish town which I used to frequent, when on leave, a
lusty lass, in a railway porter's cap, who ran an entire stationcollected tickets,
worked the signals, and carried an incredible quantity of suitcases at a time.
I'm daen' it for ma man," she explained. He's oot in yon Gaily Polly with the
Royal Scots."
Those years were testing years and tragic years, but they gave people an oppor
tunity to bring out what was best in themselves and rise superior to almost incredible
difficulties. To-day we are passing through a period quite as testing and infinitely
more depressing, because it offers no hope of a speedy or spectacular victory. The
pendulum, too, has swung over to a dangerous extreme: for the moment we seem to
have lost faith and confidence in ourselves, andstrangest of allour love of country
and pride of race.
But these things will pass, and the pendulum in due course will swing back to
normal. Meanwhile, it may hearten us to remind ourselves, especially on days like
this, of something which we are in danger of forgettingnamely, how gallantly we
bore the burden during those four terrible, splendid years.
