1666 AND ALL THAT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13237, 13 January 1941, Page 4

1666 AND ALL THAT

In September, 1G66, the Great Fire of London burned for three days and consumed 400 steets and 13.200 houses. On the evening of December 29. 19 40. Herr Hitler's air force tried to repeat the dose. It failed.

The fireworks that fizzled out is the city's name for Hitler's command performance. As Mr Pepys watched its predecessor he saw

"more and more in corners, and upon steeples between churches, and the hou-ses. the spread of the horrid, malicious, bloody flame." The watchers of 104 0 did not stop to gaze. Armed with soil scooped from churchyards, an army of householders backed up the work of the fire services. Professionals and amateurs alike felt all square with Hitler when morning showed that they had foiled his plan. "Roll out the Fire Hose!" runs our new wording to the song hit of 1940. "Pour on Water! Pour on Water!" echoes one of London's older songs, and true to tradition London's fire brigade and auxiliary fire service went into action in a way that made its citizens proud. "At dawn this morning I looked for flagging energy or fatigue and found none," said the .Lord Mayor, and the city workers arriving in his wake, set to with equal vigour to swill out desks and wring out ledgers in the knowledge that a formidable enemy had been downed.

"Jump to it!" was the shout as the shower of incentiaries crackled down. Saucepan, tin hat, bucket — any scoop will do to snuff a newly fallen bomb. "Turn that dustbin on to it." shouted a friendly voice, and London's garbage went to it just as potently as the more orthodox sand. Overheard: "I told them there was one on the top of their cinema and they were up the side like lamplighters." "The Duke of Wellington has lost his left hand, but not his conquering look." "We don't know who he was. He put out four and disappeared before we could thank him." Time Exposure, "It was midnight when I went on to the roof and instinctively at the top of the sooty ladder I looked at the dirt on my hands —I could see it plainly, it was as light as day. Billows of pink and black smoke threw the nearby buildings into silhouette and parted now and again to reveal the cross of St. Pauls fiery with reflected light. " I went up again at dawn and it was quite dark. The blaze was out."

Phoenix From The -Flames

Comparison with 1666 is tempting because the two fires blazed in the same small area. But it is misleading if it conveys the impression that the city is for the second time a vista of charred remains. This time the scars are intermittent. In between them towers and monuments rise unscathed. Curiously close to the smouldering ruins, shops stand with plateglass polished and windows dressed.

London has lost some precious buildings, but its citizens are a resilient people. They rebuilt their Guildhall and their churches three hundred years ago and what has been done once can be done again. "Fall in, the firebqmb fighters," thundered Mr Herbert Morrison on the last night of the old year, and almost before he had finished speaking, volunteers were round at the wardens' posts reporting for duty. Every action, says the first law of physics, has its immediate and opposite reaction, and next time Hitler orders a bonfire you won't be able to see our roof for spotters.