Wolf! Wolf!

One of the most extraordinary and most typically British characters that Alice met on the other side of the looking glass was the White Knight. To be prepared for "everything" he carried not only tin armor and a helmet, but also a sandwich box, a mousetrap, fire-irons, carrots, a beehive; and his horse was equipped with anti-sharkbite anklets. Great Britain was last week compared to the White Knight by more than one Briton, and the parallel was just.

Precautions went screwy. To prevent autos from striking them during blackouts, cows and horses were painted with white stripes. Sandbags climbed walls like ivy, till there was such a shortage that some lingerie factories began making them. Instead of sandbags, the lawyers of Gray's Inn protected their windows with heavy legal tomes. A rabbi banned the sounding of Shophar ram's horn on the Jewish New Year for fear the populace would take it for an air-raid signal. Stores sold luminous paint for switches and doorknobs, "gas costumes" guaranteed to resist mustard gas 45 minutes, furniture suitable for cellars, empty flashlights (batteries long since sold out).

Even faster than they get panicked, British get bored, and by last week they were heartily fed up with groping around in the dark waiting for gas and bombs which never materialized. And the Government began to realize that wolf-wolfing the populace every night was poor psychology. A reaction set in. In "safe" areas, 2,000 cinemas opened, reported exceptional business. Actors went on the road: 73-year-old Dame Marie Tempest in Dear Octopus, John Gielgud in The Importance of Being Earnest, Diana Wynyard in Design for Living. Christmas pantomime Producer Francis Laidler went ahead with plans for Mother Goose, The Ugly Sisters, three other -L-40.000 productions in which the hoarse-voiced, hairy-legged, loosely hairpinned male comedians' parts would be taken for the first time by women, releasing the men for war action. London night life revived. The Cafe de Paris, an official public air-raid shelter for 200, packed in more than that.

Sports went into the Army with the athletes. Boxing and soccer, popular in 1914-18 with the Tommies, went inter-regimental. The first wartime boxing match, attended by 2,000, was held at the Aldershot training camp. All horseracing fixtures (like the Cesarewitch Stakes, on which millions are gambled annually in the Irish Sweepstakes) were canceled, but the blood stock industry, which unearthed great horses like Gainsborough and Hurry On in World War I, hoped to keep racing horses even without crowds.

Shopkeepers were worried but courageous. A typical window sign in a St. Paneras grocery: "Called up, wife carries on." One West End druggist put a sign in his window: "Bismuth as usual during altercations."

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