Hell & High Water

After their month and a half of disastrous cold, snow, and coal shortage, it seemed as if most Britons were resigned to desolation and actually expected the floods which engulfed them last week. The people accepted inundated houses, loss of work and wages, huge losses in agriculture and livestock, as just added afflictions.

There were floods in all but six of England's 40 counties and in many parts of Wales. England's northernmost areas and Scotland were spared, but there many towns were still snowbound. The Thames was on an angry rampage in its valley reaches. Central London, which is never flooded, had drinking water troubles and a titanic traffic jam as power failures halted subway trains.

From northern Shropshire down to the Bristol Channel, the Severn swirled over its highest known flood marks. Many Yorkshire mine pits were inundated--another serious setback for coal production.

Cheerful Stoicism. Thousands were homeless. More thousands were marooned. Many evacuees, sheltered and fed by the Army and Red Cross, evidently enjoyed the break in routine; they seemed to be playing a part that called for "cheerful stoicism." Frederick More and his wife reflected the general attitude, as a boatman rowed them to their waterlogged house in Windsor. Said twinkling Mr. More: "I've always wanted a holiday in Venice; now I know what it's like. At first the wife was fed up, but now she treats it like a joke." Said thin, worried-looking Mrs. More: "The truth is, we're getting used to disaster."

There was nothing lighthearted about the efforts to save thousands of acres of the rich Fenlands of Norfolk and East Anglia, Britain's main vegetable bin and a major breadbasket. There 3,000 soldiers, hundreds of German prisoners and scores of farmers worked desperately all week to bolster a seven-foot dike and to plug a break in the Ouse River's banks.

At week's end came failure. With the roar of a great explosion, the flood burst the dike, billowed over about 25,000 acres, destroying much of the area's winter wheat. A big stored crop of potatoes was lost. That was not the worst of it: the Fenlands' farmers feared that it might take two years to pump out the lowlands and restore them to productivity.

There were heavy crop losses elsewhere. Tens of thousands of sheep and cattle had been destroyed. The prolonged, heavy snows had cost Britain two-thirds of her stock of young hill sheep (those which graze on the uplands and are later sent to the lowlands to fatten). In the lowlands 1,000,000 head had been lost. To wool-weaving, meat-hungry Britain that meant another crisis. The people were going to need every bit of stoicism they could muster.

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