Goodbye to All That

The blackout" was officially ended in Britain* last week. But for most Britons the lightup was a letdown. Instead of full illumination, they got only an installment. Darkened cities along the coast will remain dark. And streets will not be fully lit till July 15.

In London lights gleamed only in. patches around hotels, pubs, penny arcades. Around Piccadilly Circus, crowds, looking for lights, milled on one another's toes in the blackness. On Leicester Square, London's movie mecca, two beaconlike signs sliced the darkness. One said: "Gentlemen"; the other: "Ladies."

For most Britons the best thing about the lightup was that they could at last take down their blackout curtains. For 2,061 nights (and mornings) they had been one of the biggest minor nuisances Britons had had to struggle with. Now the curtains were being converted into black clothes and funeral coverings. Said a housewife: "With the curtains gone, I feel I've got no clothes on." Said a five-year-old moppet, watching her mother take down the curtains: "It's lovely to let out the light, but how shall we keep out the dark?"

As gingerly as they lit up again, Britons relaxed from their V-2 strain. The stratosphere siege had lasted seven months, and the noiseless rockets had worn Londoners' nerves thin. The V-2s started dropping the day after Prime Minister Winston Churchill's son-in-law, Minister of Works Duncan Sandys, announced that V-1 was licked. Before they stopped coming on March 27, 1,050 rockets had killed 2,754 people, seriously injured 6,523, damaged an untold number of buildings (including a million-dollar cinema at Marble Arch). Last week Churchill was asked in Parliament if he had an announcement to make about V2. Mindful of Duncan Sandys' unfortunate experience, he answered: "They have ceased." Then he sat down.

*Moscow's blackout was lifted on April 30. For the first time in four years, lights shone again in the huge stars atop the Kremlin's towers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.