LONDON TO-DAY

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23351, 10 June 1941, Page 5

LONDON TO-DAY

♦ DESTRUCTION AND LITTER AFTERMATH OP THE RAIDS (F.0.0.C.) LONDON, May 14. Flying brick dust, gaping manholes, occasional' mounds of sand that have quelled incendiaries, straggling empty hose pipes, the steady beat of waterpumping engines, and the gnawing rattle of pneumatic drills—all these are familiar sights and sounds in London to-day. London to-day, and particularly the City of London, has to be seen to be believed. No written account, no photographs, and not even films,- can reproduce the sights that surround the Londoners of to-day and theatmosphere in which they live and go to work. ,In the city itself, street after street has been wrecked. Only crumbled ruins remain of rows and rows of shops and offices. There is no traffic, and the padding of footsteps is the lighter accompaniment to the machinery of demolition gangs. The people themselves are quiet, but their eyes miss nothing; and if they say little in the streets all the sights and sounds are indelibly impressed on their minds. A six-storey building that has escaped fire has been hit by a bomb. A mass of masonry has sprawled into the street like an erosion in the clay bank overshadowing a road; a mass of steel girders bent and twisted resemble an iron bedstead that has been twisted for wanton joy. In the tea shop on the opposite side of the road cakes and buns are displayed in a window naked of glass. The demolition workmen, grouped in gangs, sing and joke among themselves as they work. They have become inured to the wilderness of damage. They handle it all day long, it means work to them, and there is no point in their remaining lugubrious—although they may have lost their own homes and their families may be separated from them. Bomb craters scar the streets, pockmarking them, and the wooden bricks of London’s roads are scattered with a mingling of concrete bed. The scenes are crazy and senseless. Steam from some building newly razed by fire eddies above the bricks'in hesitant clouds, and stale .smoke leaves an acrid sting in the nostrils. In the shopping areas whole stores have been burnt out in some of the streets. Where the outer walls stand the flames have often left their marks on the window facings, crumbling them and rotting them; and there are smears of black soot, the mark of eddying smoke. Irreparable Loss So many famous and ancient buildings have now been destroyed that the public mind may be excused if it fails to grasp the enormity of the damage and the irreparable loss to the city that has been famous throughout the world for its roots in history. Each new raid means fresh destruction. Twice St. Clement Danes, the official church of the Australians in London, was scarred by bombs. Now it is merely a hollow shell. Yet the statue of Dr. Johnson still stands facing Temple Bar and Fleet Street beyond. A short, stumpy figure, he continues to read his book unperturbed; and those who have read and reread his works can almost imagine him Snorting indignantly; "Sir, the Nazis are a mere heathen rabble." The lovely, ancient Temple Church has also gone. For long months of raids, while buildings all round it were razed, it stood unharmed. People from the entire world had visited it. It dated from 1129, was owned by the Knight Templars, and later came into the possession of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The house in which Oliver Goldsmith died is demolished, and only its doorway stands, Lamb’s house in Crown Office row, "place of my kindly engendure,” is wrecked, but the court to which he was moved as a “Recabite of eleven” fortunately remains. And so the sorry tale continues. St. Paul’s still stands, damaged by bombs, but unharmed by fire. Yet flames have ravaged buildings on its four sides now, and it rises high above a scene of increasing desolation. How the flames have spared it seems little short of miraculous.

The trail of raid damage leads all over England, It is repeated with sickening familiarity In all the big cities and ports. Small wonder that when the Prime Minister (Mr Winston Churchill) walks among and talks to the people, they urge him to ‘‘Give it them back.”