STYGIAN DARKNESS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 9

STYGIAN DARKNESS

AVOIDING THE ZEPPELINS

AMONG THE BLACK SQUADS.

Of the possible range of the Zeppelin there is no exact knowledge (writes the Glasgow correspondent of the Sydney Sun). Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool discussed raids upon London with semi-detached concern. Then the night birds drummed within bomb-throw of them and "All lights out" was the order. From to-day Scotland is also plunged in Stygian darkness an hour after sunset. This great and thriving city of Glasgow.has always had a reputation—or notoriety—for blackness by day and night. Brit the,blackness of its blackness has never approached what it is this evening and will be to-morrow and the day after, war without end.

It is many months since I last came north. The whole life of the people has changed. The express' trains pound through stations stripped of .the male sex, except they have the squeaky voices of early adolescence or the rheumy, toothless tones of old age; through towns and cities where . every fit man is in khaki, and almost every woman is in active, bustling work; through peaceful paddocks gashed by red-lipped trenches and pastured . plains upon which the War God has descended.

_ Twixt Trent and Tweed, as indeed right along the route, it is noticeable how quickly and effectively girls and women are taking the places of boys and young men. No longer does a-, lad assault your ears with hideous bawling noises about chocolate or fruit. Girls, neatly garbed, flit quietly, but with celerity, along the trains, satisfying all demands. Young women check the tickets at the gates, and some of them, inspect a train, that is,- examine travellers' tickets, with more courtesy and circumspection than many male examiners ever displayed. And in. the fields— carpeted with snow—l saw girls wrapped in warm plaids, tending sheep like shepherds from ancient history, or gathering the cows in before the twilight failed. _Wonian is making the most of her opportunity. . She is having a royal time in Glas-' gow. All the. trams are. run by sturdy girls dressed iu famous Clan plaids, and every possible corner in each factory is occupied by girls with ready brains and clever hands. They are making such good wages that the domestic servant problem is very acute. In residential suburbs many, desirable houses in every street are deserted, and have the .mournful sign,- "To Let," outside. Families' who wiU not fend for themselves have abandoned their homes and have gone into boarding-houses which prefer to say that they take "paying guests." , The days' when a "general" was procurable for £16 to £20 a year have fled. A lady,with tears of vexation in her eyes informed me that a chambermaid had "actually asked for 16s a week."

The war has brought a plethoric prosperity to Glasgow. The number of men required in the shipbuilding yards exceeds the supply. I went for miles and miles along the Clydeside and saw innumerable ships in course ,of construction. What they were I have not the' faintest idea. But this Ido know, that no mercantile „ tonnage Is being laid down..or completed. . The-whole energy of tlie stupendous construction power of the Clyde is being devoted to ■ ships of war.' To move beside its'sluggish, tawny, turbid waters is to.realise that tlie Kaiser can never wrest the Trident of the Sea from Great Britain unless some impossible calamity overtakes our great Navy. Day and night' the " black squads " fill the heavens with tjhe: clang of riveting, and great ships go down to the sea ready for the line of battle in less than it formerly took to finish their less time than it formerly took to finish, their mammoth ribs.

The nation is the safer for the deafening^ noise of Clydebank, but not necessarily the richer. The war has brought a special crop of social problems. The "black squads" in Glasgow were passing rich on £2 a week eighteen months' ago. Now they are averaging £4, £5, £6, and, in some instances, even £10 a week, and they are relatively little better off than in the lean days of the past. Easy come, easy go,, is true of the skilled workers in the _ shipyards. Instead of thriftily putting' a goodly percentage of the increased • wages aside for the inevitable rainy day, which must follow the proclamation of peace, they are spending every farthing they receive in cheap and often worthless luxuries. The Chancellor of the'Exchequer, is perturbed because his -modest £5 War Bpnds are neglected -by the manual worker, while even the opportunity' of purchasing a five-year Bond of £1 for 16s 8d has not attracted the Glasgow squads.

The "popular" jewellery shops are doing a'roaring business. In the streets there are many evidences of their tremendous turnovers. . Tho city has a hard-working, buxom class of women, who are known as "shawlies," because: a-, shawl does as a hat and cloak for them when they move abroad in.winter. The shawls nowadays are held in position by diamond and gold clasps, or glittering diamond brooches' made of stones found in. the diamond fields ,of Birmingham fake factories, and manytimes when the wind , whisks aside' the shawl there is a fur overall beneath— fur of- the quality which comes from marten caught in Whitechapel. . ..The consumption of whisky is phenomenal. The men seem bent upon drinking the Empire into financial stability, and the women upon emptying the Manchester warehouses of all their shoddy stocks. The "Lights Out" order may alter all this. The danger of Zeppelin visitations has brought better realisation of the war in other crowded centres., Glasgow wrapped in funereal gloom may grope towards a truer conception of what it should do. One bomb dropped on its capacious common would be more efficacious than a hundred orations on thrift in Parliament or a dozen exhortations in The Times. But then nobody wants that bomb to fall.