"RESURGAM"

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 31, 6 August 1945, Page 3

"RESURGAM"

SYMBOLIC INCIDENT

SIR PATRICK DUFF'SJALK

Word pictures of London, during th_ war were vividly delivered _, in an address last evening by Sir Patrick Duff, X.C.8.. X.C.V.0., the recently appointed High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in N.Z.

Many a time since the darkest days of 1940 he-had thought of an incident then which interested him personally, he said. In the height of a severe, incendiary raid, while he and. Lady Duff and the rector of Chelsea Old Church were fighting the showering fire bombs, the rector was-informed that his church had been hit by an explosive bomb,, and people ifefad been killed and injured there. The rector went to the scene, and after the injured had been looked after he returned sadly to his friends""with a piece of marble from the" ruined church; containing the one word, "Rei surgam"—"l shall rise again," ... When any church was ( destrpyed— and it was difficult to stop a' fire once it started in such build ingst-_th£. service went on regularly under strange conditions, perhaps, but no more strange than that of the "House of Commons conducting its business after the debating chamber had been smashed. "If you visited London now,' having known it before, you would be"Bound, wherever you go, to be shocked by its scars," said Sir Patrick. "Perhaps the most universally depressing thing is the lack of paint. It looks dingy without the periodical coats of paint which were a matter of course before, the war. And, with the widespread^ loss of windows, so many houses and-even the streets seem to have lost their expression. ..--.»» MELANCHOLY BUSINESS/ "It is a melancholy business.-.to see the multitudes oi broken, blackened dwellings, empty now for years past and unnt for nabitation, but too solid to be removed without undue labour, it is gloomy to see the tattered* bits of black-out blinds flapping limply out of the paneless windows and to see the utter sordidness and ruin of war. Sometimes one sees high blocks of flats where bombs have cut a segment o tit from top to bottom. Looking from the ground one sees the wallpaper flapping or still sticking to-the walls. \'l found it specially affecting as one looks upwards through the ceilingless, floor-less, stories of vacant blocks of flats to see the series of little fireplaces still built in on each separate storey to the main chimney and to think how'once, perhaps, some happy little family gathered round each innocent hearth and how it was their beloved home and haven of rest and the place .where all their little personal treasures were around them and all the little scenes of family life were enacted. :._r:.. "As the years have goneby, it is strange to see how Nature";" has, in places, shyly come and "' tried with gentle hand to bring some''offering to cover the ruin which man has wrought or to light some little lamp of colour in the waste. The seed of many grasses has blown: seedling trees, now several feet high, have rooted themselves on rubble heaps or in gaping cellars or on old sandbag walls. "There were some pretty, anxious times. I remsmber, for instance, one week —again I have forgotten whether it was at the end of 1940 dr". early in 1941—when no less than Jive of the main London railway termini were out of action simultaneously. In a crowded capital where 8,000,000 people have to be transported over many miles in all. directions, and have to;'be:fed, this was serious. There was a- time when, only three days' coal supply '.remained for that vast capital: and since about 80 per cent, of London's coal came in normal times by sea from, the*. North of England down the East Coast, and. all this stuff had, owing to submarines, to be diverted to rail at short notice, you can imagine what a colossal problem this was from the point'of view %>f providing coal sidings and from, the point of view of finding the labour to handle the stuff. AnaL-welL do I remember when the Germans, by a lucky hit, managed to 'de-troy the. sewage pumping arrangements of London. For many days-after that the. Thames ran black." : The people's faith and courage, said Sir Patrick, never flagged !at all. No one could do justice to them. There was no glamour or hot joy of battle for them: only infinite toil by^day and continuous raids by night, and their air raid precaution duties' 'dn top of their toil; and sleeplessness. If they had flinched, if that great city, so pivotal in its ramifications, throughout Britain's industry and economy, had thrown up the sponge, the course of all human affairs would have ,ta.ken a very different turn. -' - SLOW IJVIPROVEMENT. "Slowly—very slowly I ani "afraidconditions may ease a little"'for*'the Londoner. Great thought is"; especially being given to the future town planning of London itself—where new streets shall run, where spaces-now denuded of buildings shall remain for ever open spaces, where premises for business shall be permissible, and where they shall not be, and where and how fast and in what "quantities homes of which England can be-proud may rise again t Public consciousness has never, been so. alive as today to the duty of providing good'"and spacious housing: and the whole-housing problem with town house design, the organisation, of labour, conr trol of materials, and so forth are the burning questions among all domestic issues. For London's citizens1! deserve the best that all the resources and the ingenuity of the times can provide."