FIRM AS A ROCK

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 59, 7 September 1945, Page 5

FIRM AS A ROCK

BRITISH CHARACTER

UNCHANGED BY TRIALS

Interesting sidelights of Britarn at war, with particular emphasis on the steadfastness of the British people, were given by Sir Patrick Duff, High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, at a reception given to him and Lady Duff by th\ Wellington branch of the Royal Emptre Society and the Victoria League on Wednesday. Sir Patrick expressed pleasure at the warm welcome given him and Lady Duff, and said that such organisations as the Empire Society and the League were designed to keep alive the consciousness of the Empire's mission and the services it could offer to humanity. He had had many inquiries as to whether people at Home had changed in the last few years owing .to their trials, said Sir Patrick. It was possible that some habits and fashions, some conventions, some prejudices, even some good institutions, had changed; for, as Tennyson had written, "the old order changeth, yielding place to new and God fulfils himself in' many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world." But the British character in its fundamentals still stood unchanged, steadfast as a rock. The past few years had demonstrated that the force of centuries past had not abated. One of the abiding and saving graces of the British people was that they did not take themselves too seriously. Mr. Churchill had hit the nail on the head when he said that the British people in the war years had carried on, grave and gay. That represented, said Sir Patrick, as the doctor would say, "the mixture as before." He related several amusing incidents which illustrated unmistakably the character of the people. Centuries of achievement, experience, and tradition had their influence. After Dunkirk many thought Britain's hour had struck, but that never entered the heads of the people of Britain, perhaps because their country had not been invaded for 1000 years and people remembered what had happened to those who had tried it. The London Tavern restaurant, dating back to about 1500, had been badly blitzed. In about 1941 it carried a slogan, "We kept open during the Spanish Armada and we are not closing now." A flying bomb falling in a small suburb would leave 700 families homeless. Swathes of formless rubble, tiles, and glass fell and for acres roofs were tileless, doors were sucked out, and ceilings and floors cascaded to the ground. In one such place which he passed near Raynes Park in a suburban electric train, among shattered homes, devastation, stark ruin, and heartbreak, he had seen a party of Englishmen playing a game of bowls. "They were just ordinary middle-aged 'blokes,'" said Sir Patrick, "in slouch hats and braces, round in the 'pot' in spite of rationing, shopkeepers' clerks, innkeepers, civil servants, bus conductors, grocers, and churchwardens, taking a little ease. All. of them were A.R.P. wardens, stretcher-bearers, rescue workers, and fire-watchers, who lately had been living in a tornado of flame, noise, and dust." It had reminded him of the famous game of bowls at the time of the Armada. He' had realised, he said, that there were always some fine "somebodies" dwelling in the streets where the "nobodies" lived. HITLER'S MISCONCEPTION. The "Old Country" was not old in the sense that a human being grew old. Hitler had found that a misconception. The secret of England's vitality was that her institutions were so flexible and so adaptable that change was part of her system, and she renewed her youth with every passing age. She was as much at home in the 20th century as she had been 500 years ago. Sir Patrick spoke of the ineradicable impression created by a service in Gloucester Cathedral not long before YE Day, a cathedral redolent of England's history, and of surpassingly beautiful architecture, where the sun now and again threw patches of jewelled amethyst, or pink or blue jewelled light on the white nurses' uniforms, or on khaki. In this eleventh century church the mothers of the bowmen of Crecy, the mothers of sailors of Trafalgar and generations of Englishmen returning from the wars had come there to give thanks. He seemed to see the crowded centuries looking on with kindly eyes and falling in bohind the ranks of England's latest and youngest Christian soldiers.

"In this year of grace and .victory, 1945, the morning is before Britain and her wings are strong," concluded Sir Patrick. He wished continued succes to the organisations working for the spirit of Empire and the fellowship which could put the best and most binding cement into the edifice of world co-operation.

Mr. G. G. C. Watson thanked Sir Patrick for his "eloquent and inspiring address."