AN UNHAPPY CITY

Evening Star, Issue 18020, 14 July 1922, Page 7

AN UNHAPPY CITY

LIFE IN WARLIKE BELFAST

NERVES ON EDGE.

If it be true to say that anything can be proved by statistics, it is equally certain tiiat statistics alone may prove nothing at ail (writes the Belfast correspouuunt of ‘ The Times’ on May 28). It is a bald fact -that within the past week fourteen Protestants and eleven Roman (Jatlioiies have lost their lives in Belfast, and mat a vastly greater number of persons -on cither side have been more or less seriously injured by bullets, bombs, or in other ways. Again, during the past two months upwards of ninety business buildings owned by Protestant firms have been set on fire by incendiaries, and on Friday last, for example, no lower than seventeen calls were received by tho Fire Brigade, of which a dozen were received in tno evening between 8 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. And yet these figures, significant as they are up to a certain point, do not in any way express adequately the extraordinary conditions in which ono spends one's existence in this unhappy city. Certain features, of course, are so obvious as to force themselves upon tho observation of tho least imaginative visitor. You cannot walk literally fifty yards along any of tho main streets without coming upon either soldiers in khaki, memuers ot the Royal Ulster Constabulary in their sombre uniform, or civilians with tho brassard of ono or other of the classes of the special constabulary. Now and again you come unexpectedly upon a. house with sandbagged windows, outside the door of which a British soldier is standing on sentry guard, while from the upper windows peer cut the cheery faces of other soldiers, smoking and talking among themselves. From time to time an armored car, with gun muzzles pointing from its turrets, threads its way in and out of tho traffic, or there hurries past a protected lorry crammed with armed constabulary under its bomb-proof netting covering. After the first few minutes you _ are mildly surprised at these warlike manifestations. If you walk down Royal avenue or some other main thoroughfare in the middle of .the day you will find the shops alt open and people apparently going about their business in a normal way. The streets are filled with people of both sexes and of all ages. Elderly business men, babies iu perambulators, young men in tweeds with a bag of golf clubs swung over their shoulders, girls in light summer frocks swinging their tennis rackets and. shoes, flower girls, newspaper boys, taxicab drivers standing on -the ranks —there is nothing, in short, to prove that " business as usual” is not being carried on in this strenuous modern city. THE HOUR OF DANGER. Irresistibly there comes over one much the same feeling of wonder with which one visited, during an unwonted lull, a notoriously unpleasant line of trenches. Things seem all right, and yet one has no reason to suypose that one’s companion is unduly prone to “ wind up.” The first serious indications in the centre of the town that everything is not a gigantic bluff come towards 6 o’clock. As the shops begin to close and the throng of people in the streets grows thicker and thicker round tho stopping places of tho tramcars, there is a marked increase of armed soldiers in the streets. At nearly every street comer they stand in small bunches of two to four, or come-hurrying in pairs along the pavements, steel _ helmets on their heads, rifles at the trail, and their bandoliers filled full with cartridges. At this hour, and from now onwards till next morning, the prudent _ man docs not go wandering about the side streets without inquiring first into what quarter ho is straying. Tho hour following the close of _ the shipyards, workshops, and factories is a favorite time for the gunman’s special activities. A tramcar filled with workmen coming from such and such a suburb is almost certainly occupied entirely by Protestants; another car coming from another quarter may contain a vast majority of Roman Catholics. The practised eye of the gunman is as quick to recognise his friends and enemies as the sailor’s is to identify a_ warship by her silhouette, and if -he is in the mood and the circumstances seem favorable he acts accordingly. There is tho sharp crack of a revolver shot or 'the louder, duller explosion of a bomb, and then the trouble begins. FASCINATION OF THE FIRING. It is really a remarkable thing that tho number of victims is not .greater than it is. The hurling of a -bomb at a tramcar last Wednesday just off the Royal aveuuo was the signal not only for a_ number of prudent persons to take cover in any convenient doorway, but for a crowd of inquisitive idiots, without even the flimsy pretext of journalistic enterprise and duty, to rush straight to the scene of action, or as near as -the swiftly gathering police and soldiers would allow them. T!ho_ sound of firing seems to have a fatal fascination for many of them, and -if more onlookers are not hit one can only suppose either that their local knowledge tells them exactly where they’ can stand in comparative safely, or that the gunman who is so deadly at a range of thirty yards, from behind a hedge, is a poor marksman at a longer range when he is himself being sniped.

What is really so unpleasant-, and in tho long run so wearing to the nerves, is the continual unexpectedness and treachery of all these outrages. One ran, of course, infinitely more real danger of death during ten minutes of a German bombardment than one runs here in a week; but there are many persons who would willingly -take the former in preference to the fatter experience. At least you knew who were your friends and who your enemies, and where your front lay. Here you do not. The man who is as keen as you are to buy the evening newspaper to see whether Goddard beat Wells, or what is happening to Pondoland, may, for all you know, have a revolver in his hip-pocket and a couple of bombs in his jacket. Your neighbor in a tramway car or in a railway carriage may be a dangerous fanatic who may try to kill you if vou let slip an incautious observation. It is scarcely surprising, then, if people’s nerves are all on edge and that thenatural taciturnity of the Scot has been far outdone by the silence of the prudent Belfast man before strangers. It says much for the general restraint of the population at large—'Protestant and Roman Catholic alike—that this city has not as yet been disgraced by even worse excesses than (have given it such a sinister reputation.