THE SPIRIT OF LONDON

Evening Star, Issue 23745, 28 November 1940, Page 14

THE SPIRIT OF LONDON

WORK IN THE EAST END

(From ‘ Tlie Times.’) Corn is sprouting from the platform of a mission ball in Fast London. The green shoots, throe or four inches tall, are rooted in the dust and small debris with which the platform has been strewn since fire burned out the building a fortnight ago; they had been preparing for a harvest festival when the German bomb arrived. “ A hparable,” says the head of the mission, pointing to the fresh young growth. ‘‘We shall live again.” When the time comes for compiling the intimate history of London through its days as a salient in the Battle of Britain, the churches, missions, and settlements of all denominations in Fast and South-east London will be indispensable sources for the historians. They are in the front line themselves, sharing all the daily and nightly risks of the populations among whom their work lies.

When you talk with the- clergymen, ministers, and mission workers you learn that their own experiences have been as strange, and often every bit as terrifying, as those of their people. Nevertheless, it is of these people that they speak chiefly—of the wonderful spirit and fortitude with which they face Hitler’s and Goering’s worst—and of the great work that men and women belonging to creeds not their own are doing. The warden of a Free Church settlement praises an indomitable elderly vicar living near; a rural dean on the other side of the river receives the same deserved tributes from the superintendent of a Methodist mission. The work of the Nonconformists evokes similar tributes from the Anglicans. Those are just examples. Common humanity is in these clays everywhere recognised ns the first and closest of the ties binding the community together. NO PANIC. “ Our people have been quite marvellous,” said a woman doctor in Bermondsey. “ A year ago, when we started our first aid post, one of our big problems was which room to set apart for nervous patients. But actually we haven’t had a case of hysteria or panic. Wc have had the place crowded with wounded, without a solitary instance of what one could call panic. The young V.A.D.s, like all the others on the staff, .have stood up to their work all the time.” Lately a bomb removed the kitchen, rest room, and air raid shelter belonging to the first aid post, but surgery and receiving room are still standing; all the staff were in the receiving room, and no one was hurt, and the work* goes on. The woman doctor’s husband is himself a doctor. He was driving the family car the other day when he heard an aeroplane diving so low that he jumped out and ran to shelter in a house. He had just reached it when the bomb wiped out the car.

The superintendent of a chain of missions north of the river was on the point of leaving his office to conduct a burial when one talked with him. The victim was one of a family of 11; the superintendent had already buried .all the rest of the family, except the father, whoso body had not been found. He said that one of the things that trouble the East Ender, who has his own strict conventions, is that there are not coffins enough for all -the dead just now, so that some must be buried in shrouds.

Churches and missions are giving shelter to the homeless and at the same time getting as many as they can away from London, usually hy enlisting aid from churches of their own denomination in the country. The reluctance of many East Enders, more particularly in Dockland, to leave familiar haunts is strongly in evidence. “To so many of our people,” one was told, “ it is a terrifying adventure to go out of their own distinct ; so many are dockers, wharfingers, and so on almost by heredity, with no personal relationships whatever away from the river.” Missions have set up community rest and feeding centres, which serve not only the homeless, wh’o have lost everything, but men whose wives and 'families have gone to greater safety, leaving them alone where their daily work lies. The basement of one mission is at present giving shelter to a family which has three times been bombed out of its sleeping quarters. HUMOUR STILL REMAINS. The Prime Minister’s watchword, “ Grim and gay,” is exemplified every day in East London. The background might be thought too grim for much humour; but the humour is there, and with surprisingly little vindictiveness about it. “ One thing Hitler has done for us,” a woman said cheerfully : “ we ain’t going to pay no rent this month.” Another remarked, “ With all this sand about you might as well he living in Egypt.” The spirit behind it all is that of the little girl who, when removed from a mission hall that had been struck in Rotherhithe, was complimented because she never cried. “Why should I cry? I’m seven years old,” she said indignantly.

It was a working man who said, “ 1 don’t mind about losing; all my furniture —thank God I’ve got both my legs.” The same feeling has been often voiced, in different ways, during recent days—the realisation that material belongings, tragic though their loss often is, do not matter compared with life itself. That indomitable vicar whom one has mentioned met a friend the morning after his church and vicarage had been destroyed. He and his wife wore extricated from the mins and taken across the river to Wapping in a boat, the only way of escape open. The vicar had lost not only his fine library of books but everything elm, to spectacles and false teeth. His first words to his friends were, “ There is a wonderful feeling of freedom in having no possessions.” His wife has since beeii bombed out of a hall in the district; and from there went to a friend’s house, from which she was driven in turn by the near presence of a time bomb.