Report on the Nation

Back in North Africa last week after a vacation, Roving Reporter Ernie Pyle was asked so often by soldiers about life back home that he wrote down his estimate for stay-at-homes to read:

". . . There are a couple of meatless days a week in many places and steaks are very scarce. Yet I know places in Washington where you can get steak every night. They are not black-market either. It's almost impossible to buy liquor by the bottle, but you can still get plenty by the drink. Sure, you can get milk and eggs, too.

"Most of your circle of men friends have gone. Gas rationing makes it a little hard to get around, but you manage. The shortage of domestic help is dire. Prices are high, but nothing compared to what the French and Italians charge us over here.

"Train travel is sometimes difficult, but certainly not impossible. You can't get a new telephone installed now, and laundry takes a long time. . . . You can still telephone long distance and talk as non-essentially as you like. . . .

"Everybody has money, and entertainment of all kinds goes full blast. Ninety per cent of the people you meet say, 'I think we're too complacent here at home.' "The people are talking a lot of Republican talk, but from what I could see of the tenor of the people the President will stay in next year.

"I found absolutely no criticism of the grand strategy or the conduct of the war, although there is plenty of it about the conduct of the home front. . . ."

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