Bloody 'eroes

For embattled Britain the time had come to tell the world its tale of total mobilization. Britain told it last week in a Government White Paper, wrapping in dispassionate statistics the whole story of what war had done to a people, what the people had done in the war.

Civil servants headed by tall, gaunt Sir Edward Bridges (son of the late Poet Laureate) had compiled the data which His Majesty's Stationery Office issued under the crushing title: "Statistics Relating to the War Effort of the United Kingdom." The London Observer had a better description: "Here at length is the arithmetic of blood, the chemistry of sweat, the accounting of tears." And Bill Bradshaw, a street sweeper in the City of London, summed up: "It's about time we bloody 'eroes 'ad a look-in."

Bloody 'eroes, the likes of Bill Bradshaw and his friends, had been mobilized for war with a totality undreamed of in 1918. From a male population of 22 million, no less than 5 1/2 million were serving or had served in the armed forces--57% of all men from 18 to 40. This high degree of male mobilization was made possible by the fact that women in their turn had been (for the first time in Britain's history) compulsorily mobilized for auxiliary war services, for civil defense or war industry. Of 16 million women aged 14 to 59, more than 7 million were in those three categories. Of the balance, many were keeping house for those mobilized.

Austerity Board. Merely keeping house had become vastly difficult. One of every three houses had been destroyed or damaged by bombs; only the most urgent of minor repairs could be made, little furniture could be replaced. The "austerity" table had only one-third as much butter as in 1939, two-thirds as much meat, less than half as many eggs, less than half as much fresh fruit.

The reason, food-importing Britain well knew, was that dry cargo coming into United Kingdom ports had been cut from 55 million to 26 million tons a year. Loss of ships (11,643,000 gross tons between September 1939 and January 1944) and the demands of war manufacturing were the main reasons. In five years, Britain's arsenals had produced 35 million machine and submachine guns, each far more complex than the rifles of earlier wars. Aircraft factories, which built only 41 heavy bombers in 1940, the year of the Battle of Britain, were building them at the rate of 5,800 a year in 1944. (The manufacture of ammunition, Winston Churchill rejoiced to note, was up to all foreseeable demands.)

Debt and Death. Amid Sir Edward Bridges' somber tables of vanishing export trade, dwindling foreign balances and pyramiding debts, were others even darker. In five years the island kingdom, with a population little more than one-third that of the U.S., had suffered as many casualties--from its armed forces alone--as had the U.S. in three years. Britain's toll: 176,081 killed, 38,275 missing, 193,788 wounded, 154,968 prisoners of war. In addition, the blitz and the buzz-bomb had taken a toll of 57,298 killed (including 7,250 children and 23,757 women), and injured 78,818 more. No question, the bloody 'eroes had had it.

Intangibles. But these facts and figures stood for something more. The London Economist said what it was:

"Not only have great things been done, but they have been done in unity and in freedom. There have been no serious quarrels among the British people in these years. Strains and pressures have brought solidarity, not fracture. ... In this there is a lesson both for others and for ourselves. Other countries should be put on notice that Britain is nobody's poor relation and nobody's valetudinarian cousin. . . . More than any other nation in the world we have what treasure cannot buy: unity of purpose, freedom of spirit and an effective working machine of social collaboration."

That, too, the bloody 'eroes had.

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