Mystified By New Moves

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 153, 30 June 1945, Page 4

Mystified By New Moves

It is impossible yet to even try to solve the British election riddle..

I find large numbers of women apparently determined to vote for "Good Old Winnie." Many people say the charge that Mr. Churchill is good in war and bad in peace is unreal, because Mr. Churchill, almost alone, was right during the peace years in warning the nation about the calamity of unpreparedness.

The women's vote may do much to put the Tories in power, but there is deep bitterness against the Tories in many areas, even in some that have been traditionally Conservative.

Attempts to get the real feeling of the electorate are complicated by such incidents as occurred at a meeting for the Battle of Britain hero, Conservative Wing - Commander Lucas, D.5.0., D.F.C., at West Fulham.

Legless Battle of Britain hero and colleague, Group-Captain Bader, D.5.0., D.F.C., was booed and hooted when speaking for Lucas. National Hero Heckled The demonstrators were probably an organised band, of anti-Tories, such as are appearing at many Tory meetings, but it is difficult to think that such a demonstration against a national hero would have occurred at previous elections.

It may be that gratitude to Mr. Churchill and the feeling that Britain cannot do without him may bring the Government back with a reduced majority, but the trend to the Left, discernible far and wide, may equally put Labour convincingly at the top of the polls notwithstanding Mr. Churchill.

One thing is fairly definite—a lot of people remain angry because the nation has been plunged into an election now. You hear people saying so and they are also expressing their displeasure in letters to the newspapers.

A writer to The Times speaks what seems to be the mood of many people when he says:

"Electors want facts and policies presented positively; they can judge the failures of public men for themselves. This unreal sham fight conducted with noises off by Ministers past and present, who worked together in entire amity a month ago, carries no convictions of any kind.

"But it does play into the hands of the opponents of popular government, who point to this campaign as demonstrating the futility of the democratic system, and spreads a spirit of impatience, cynicism and dismay both among good citizens at home and fighting men overseas.

"Is 'a plague on both your houses' to be the epitaph of a war fought and won for democracy?" Still on Rampage

You are probably as bored with reading about Lord Beaverbrook's election antics as I am with writing about them, but unfortunately they are not removable from the election scene.

The "rampaging guerilla Beaverbrook and his newspapers," as the Manchester Guardian describes them, have done much to create the present muddled situation and to provoke recrimination between present and former Ministers to a pitch which nobody would have dreamed was possible a month ago.

Mr. Attlee's ferocious attack on Lord Beaverbrook recalls Mr. Baldwin's devastating allegation years ago that Lord Beaverbrook was aiming at "power, but power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot through the ages."

Even some influential Conservatives are alarmed by Lord Beaverbrook. "We shall win this election," they say, "despite Beaverbrook."

Even at 71, Mr. Churchill is remarkably resilient and never more so than when he warms up during a big occasion in Parliament or in an important broadcast.

But when I saw him last week I thought that at least he was really beginning to show his age.

I asked a colleague who has been m his close company for many months his opinion, and he confirmed my impression.

Peace Pains More Acute

England's,, and particularly London's, peace pains became more acute. Only the weather is everything that everybody wants, buckets of sunshine and warmth such as were unknown since the outbreak of war.

The streets are ablaze with riotously coloured, flimsy summer frocks and hatless and stockingless women. Judging from the frocks, you would think that the people lived in a couponless world.

Otherwise there is not anything here — excepting occasional variations—no houses, no cigarettes, no beer, no fish, no taxis, no clothes; indeed, the solitary welcome negative is no air raid sirens.

The buildings are drabber and dirtier than ever. There is no paint and no steam cleaning, yet all builtup England badly needs a bath.

Where are the hundreds of tons of fish everybody hears about daily, but seldom sees? Do they go to the big pubs and restaurants, where there are everlasting queues, while a few in the know always seem to have a seat available?

Where is the fruit we have been promised so long?

There are queues for buses and trains and lately even for bread and potatoes. The British public, after six years of war, who have suffered a longer period of food stringency than any other country in the world, including German-occupied countries, who have known food shortages only for a comparatively brief period, think it is high time that people in some of the United Nations examined their consciences and their larders and did something for Britain. Position Never Worse

Returned war prisoners are going about in battledress because the tailoring industry is chaotic. Elderly tailors who carried on during the war have faded out and there have been no apprentices in the industry. Thus, it is practically impossible to get a suit made.

Everybody trying to get into a pub for a night tells the same story: They phone 20 or 30 pubs, all of whom say they have been booked up for weeks, even months. Some pubs even tell you now to .bring your own towels and bed linen.

Fuel will be cut another 5 per cent this winter to the domestic user, who already can light the household boiler only one week in four.

Pood is tighter than at any time during the war and our greatest heroines, the housewives, are distracted trying to 'conjure meals. There is real complaining now about food, even alarm. Nobody can suggest any prospect of improvement within a reasonable time.

But it is the accommodation nightmare that is really terrifying. There has never been anything like it in Britain's history. This is the verdict of those distracted people who are seeking a roof for themselves or for friends,

and it is a warning to any New Zealanders and even Government officials who anticipate coming to Britain, which every Dominions' headquarters in London fully endorses.

It means this—unless your accommodation is assured before you leave, you may have to sleep in the streets or in fields—and this will continue for a long time.

Australia House recently sought unsuccessfully for a room for a woman. It tried 20 London pubs. Finally, the nearest accommodation she could get was at Hertford, 20 miles from London.

Two casual arrivals recently telephoned from the railway station, thinking accommodation would be easy. They are still searching.

Soldiers' Theme Song

If the fighting men back from Europe bring a theme song, it is "Just in Time."

We won this war just in time, they tell their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, the youngsters and evei-ybody else. General Eisenhower, Marshal Zhukov, Field-Marshal Montgomery, the admirals, and the airmarshals, whistle the same tune.

They have all seen by now the weapons the Huns were on the verge of using—guns, rockets, U-boats and aircraft almost unimaginable in their diabolical potentialities.

I have seen some of these things myself, and there is no argument about them. We must all agree with Field-Marshal Smuts that if there is another war it will end civilisation.

The Germans' U-boats alone were full of staggering new devices and were a threat as ugly as anything we faced. Naval experts tell me that the British Admiralty was urged by some knowing naval people to embody these gadgets in our submarines. British men have now closely studied the whole bag of tricks, so perhaps something will be done for the future.

We learned a lot from the German Navy after the last war, when one of the reasons for raising scuttled German warships at Scapa Flow was to learn the secrets of their hull construction. jLatest Housing Story

Housing shortage latest: A woman has just written to the advertising department of a newspaper: "Please cancel all further insertions of my advertisement for a large unfurnished room. There has been only one response—from a lunatic who offered to let me have his room in an asylum."

At 63, Jack Hobbs has become an elder statesman cricketer. He cap tained the Surrey Colts team, putting himself in to bat as No. 11, saying, "I won't bat if I can help it." He declared the innings closed before he had to bat and instead of fielding in his old familiar cover point position Hobbs played in "the old man's place—a corner well out of the way."

Here is one glimpse of how Britain's incomparable Naval Intelligence fooled the Huns by using a newspaper crossword puzzle.

The puzzle, when solved, showed such words as "mulberry," "gooseberry" and "overlord," the latter being the all-embracing code word for the D day operation.' But all were highly secret code words connected with the Normandy landings.

The idea was that if the German Secret Service got one of these code words through some leakage, their use in a national newspaper in Britain would persuade them that the words had been discarded and no longer had any significance.