Civilians in Battle

As thundering German bombers methodically attacked British civilians for the fourth successive week of heavy air raids, the people of London began to see themselves as a sort of army of non-fighters who must take their punishment and hold --with self-help and Government help. Among the other millions of London housewives who no longer bother with hats or have lost them amid the debris of smashed homes, Mrs. Winston Churchill tied a spotted scarf over her head and went about the streets with the Prime Minister. "Now, there's a lydy for you!" chirped an appreciative cockney.

The King's personal physician Lord Horder (chairman of the Committee of Inquiry into Shelters) summed up last week some of the basic problems with which the King's Ministers were grappling. "The crux of the problem is overcrowding," said Lord Horder. "The Government has the choice between dispersal and the provision of more shelters. But these two courses are not alternatives: both should be taken."

Government Help. Both were being taken. Some 3,000 mothers and children daily were moved out of London, dispersed in the safer countryside. Health Minister Malcolm MacDonald, son of the late Ramsay, called on 14 of the less heavily bombed boroughs of London last week to give shelter to 20,000 homeless from boroughs which have suffered more. In the swank West End many vacant homes and apartments were turned over to the poorest evacuees from grimy Limehouse and other East End slums. The once pro-Nazi Lord Redesdale, whose daughter the Hon. Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford came home from Naziland with a bullet mysteriously embedded in her throat, offered his big London house to 90 homeless people (TIME, Sept. 30) but received a rebuff. The first family to arrive from East End slums were Jewish. On being told they might have what had been the bedroom of Hitler-admiring Miss Freeman-Mitford they left in a huff. But by last week Hon. Unity's bed was slept in by Jews.

The Government appointed the distinguished barrister and World War I veteran Henry Urmston Willink as Coordinating Commissioner for Rehousing to handle problems of getting bedding, furniture, etc., for the homeless. Sir Warren Fisher, who has served since 1919 as head of the entire British Civil Service, was appointed Coordinating Commissioner of Repairs to bomb-damaged water, gas, electricity, telephone and sewer services, as well as roads. Winston Churchill gave both his new Coordinating Commissioners dictatorial power over all local political authorities, public-utility companies and even over Government departments.

This was practical wartime socialism with a vengeance. The Prime Minister grew testy when the Communist Party persisted last week in dropping leaflets among persons in shelters inciting them to occupy London subway stations which the Government was trying to keep clear so as not to choke the city's communications. Up to last week a British desire not to ruffle Joseph Stalin has left the Communists free to propagandize as they please, but Winston Churchill had squads of Scotland Yarders raid Communist Party headquarters, confiscate Red handbills.

Self-Help. Actually London tube stations had already become the chief centres where the civilian army encamped. In the Swiss Cottage tube station Londoners who now sleep there nightly on payment of the usual subway fee of three ha'pence (about 3-c-) last week began turning out their own typed news sheet, The Swiss Cottager. "There's too much litter at the all clear," said The Cottager. "Dustbins are provided! Please heed this request--our last and only territorial demand."

The civilian army, which is no army, even began spontaneously giving its leaders ranks. Whoever took it on himself to become the busiest, most effective shepherd in a London tube station was soon being called by the conglomerate crowd with good-humored respect their "Shelter Marshal."

South of the Thames people from the boroughs of Lambeth and Camberwell went to the tunnel which they call The Deep, peeled oranges, played cards, darned socks, curled each other's hair beneath the ancient arches, eventually disrobing because of massed body heat. Some 18,000 were sleeping there regularly, with only local Shopkeeper Dick Levy to keep order and settle camping-site disputes. Self-appointed and popular, he asked assistance from shelterers when necessary. Only medical officer was 19-year-old Mrs. Joan Powney, soldier's wife of the neighborhood, who has a Red Cross certificate.

Huddle and Muddle. That there was plenty of muddle as the civilian army took shelter, the whole London press frankly testified. Most of the confusion came, as Lord Horder remarked, because of "the use of shelters for a purpose for which they were not originally intended, namely as dormitories." Even totalitarian Berlin has insufficient shelters for dormitory purposes. London is up against appalling conditions of insanitation, lack of adequate toilet facilities and foul air as tens of thousands of people spend night after night sleeping on subway platforms, nodding on escalators which have been stopped until dawn, and huddled or sprawled in warehouses.

Borough officials all over London were working 16 hours daily to ease the plight of bombed-out people. But until the two new Coordinators should have time to use their dictatorial powers and slash red tape it was impossible for an evacuee to draw dole money, get railway fare for a destination in the country, secure transfer of ration cards, have children shifted from one school to another or obtain new billeting without standing in line for hours, or even days, at various offices. In one London area an official took some homeless children to a public bath, spent half an hour on the telephone getting authorization for them to stay there, then had to start telephoning again to get authority for his moppets to use the bath towels.

Coughs and Comforts. In the shelters last week many were coughing, hawking and spitting (not always into handkerchiefs) and significantly all U. S. Embassy staffers were ordered inoculated against typhoid. For the moment, Harley Street physicians said, the health of the London populace showed no sign of having been affected. But everyone knows that Winter 1940-41 is in danger of becoming a breeding season for epidemics.

The civilian army was busy this week with plans for building tiers of bunks in the subway stations. Minister of Food Lord Woolton had already provided 20 centres for distributing hot meals of beef stew, rice pudding and tea at eightpence each. London housewives whose stoves might not be functioning at home could go to municipal kitchens to cook meals. Women of the National Conference of Labor urged the Government to fix food prices, claiming that British living costs have risen 32% since break of war. Wages have also risen. With Britain now spending on her war effort more than five times the national income, some economists held that the Kingdom was already suffering inflation. John Maynard Keynes, the economist who fathered the New Deal's plans to spend the U. S. out of depression, insisted that he could find no British inflation yet.

Prayers and Pets. Characteristically Britons in the pious shires agitated themselves over whether it was their duty when at prayer "to pray also for the Germans" as enjoined by the Archbishop of York. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals revealed that, because pets are barred from air-raid shelters, great numbers of Britons are deliberately risking their lives by refusing to leave their pets. Only solution, according to the R. S. P. C. A., was to build air-raid shelters for pets. A 36-dog shelter was begun in Kensington Gardens.

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