To Preserve a Way of Life

The 352nd anniversary of the appearance off the Cornish coast of Spain's "Invincible" Armada, 130 ships transporting 24,000 men, passed last week without incident. That day had been singled out in unofficial German predictions and warnings as Britain's Doomsday. But for yet another week, from each new day to each new hour, Britons watched the time tick past, and wondered: When? The monstrous irony of last week's waiting was the way waiting Britons had to fight their own Government in defense of the same liberties which Germany threatened. A people's revolt, reflected in both Parliament and press, singled out two Cabinet members for special attack.

The Silent Column was the name which Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper gave to a propaganda campaign urging secrecy in all military matters. Nothing new and decidedly sensible in a war in which traitors serve as military vanguards the movement was tolerated as long as it remained within reasonable bounds. But recently Duff Cooper intensified his drive until it became preposterously exaggerated. Three cinema shorts, a deluge of new colored posters, quarter-page advertisements in 108 newspapers and 72 magazines kept dinning: "Never pass on knowledge about the place or extent of air-raid damage; don't trust enemy broadcasts and don't discuss them with others; if you know somebody who makes a habit of causing worry and anxiety by passing on rumor, tell the police; if it's true, the enemy can use it--if it's not true, the enemy is using you."

What really rubbed Britons the wrong way was enforcement. Last week 17 people were sentenced and fined a total of 123 weeks and -L-162 for defeatist chatter, most of it harmless. Harry Blessingdon, a young engineer who had built an airport, was caught telling a Church of England canon about it in a hotel lobby. Sentence: three months, -L-60. William Henry Garbett, a Birmingham clerk and Oxford Grouper, said over lunch: "It will be a good job when the British Empire is finished." Sentence: one year. A Leicester schoolteacher, Kathleen Mary Bursnall, got two months, -L-20, for saying to soldiers: "You are bloody fools to wear that uniform." Others were punished for joking about how the swastika would look over the Houses of Parliament, speculating about flying 40-ton Nazi tanks, grousing that parashots were "damned rot." Cases like these crystallized resentment against Minister of Information Duff Cooper, already unpopular, because he sent his son to safe haven in the U. S. while poor children were kept home. Said the Daily Mail: "If the Minister of Information is to kill rumor he must put something in its place."

Magna Charta was a document wistfully referred to in Britain last week. One by one cherished civil liberties were falling by the wayside. Last week Minister of Home Security Sir John Anderson introduced into the House of Commons a bill which proposed putting an end to the most sacrosanct right of all --trial by jury. The bill provided for special, emergency war-zone courts which could pass any sentence, including death. Sir John Anderson's Emergency Powers Act was already excuse for the Silent-Column arrests and trials. Wrote the News Chronicle: "Begging your pardon, Sir John, we would remind you that you are no longer in Bengal. ... No doubt the purpose of recent proceedings under your order is to improve morale. . . . The morale of the British people needs no improvement."

Actually no one was cocky, but few funked: victory would come some day if not soon. Meanwhile, people were eager to make every useful sacrifice, such as donating kitchens full of aluminum for aircraft production. In north county industrial towns, where repeated air raids had wrecked many homes, people still tried to behave as if the nightly trip to shelters was a picnic outing. London reviews were crowded with people who could laugh uproariously at war-flavored jokes. Housewives were still in the mood and the money to shop, and flower stands were loaded with the best and gayest flowers in years. In air-raid shelters in intellectual Bloomsbury, Britons kept alive their ancient, threatened culture by chanting quaint madrigals. Britons were still Britons, but they would not have been human if the strain had made no impression.

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