NO WORLD BUT WAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1943, Page 8

NO WORLD BUT WAR

LONDON’S TRAGIC CHILDREN A recent survey of London school children has shown that youngsters between the ages of five and seven have forgotten so many of the attributes of peace-time living that they will have a hard time adjusting themselves to normal conditions again. Most of the children when questioned about such things as street lights or foods like bananas, stared suspiciously at the teacher and indicated plainly that they did not believe in their existence. When one little boy was taken out and shown a row of street lamps and asked what they were for, he merely shrugged his shoulders in a puzzled manner. Most of the younger children could not remember seeing lighted shop windows or electric signs in the streets, and nearly all of them thought that the barrage balloons over London had always been there. Where the teacher in one class brought in a sea shell and asked her pupils to name it, not one of them was able to do so. “It’s a shell,” she explained finally. “That’s no shell,” a little boy replied heatedly. “Shells come out of guns.” Bananas, grapefruit, tangerines, and lemons were also unknown to the majority. One boy had recently seen a lemon in a hothouse in Kew Gardens and a little girl vaguely remembered having had a grapefruit many years ago. She described it as bigger than an orange and sour. Food and clothing rationing is another thing most of the younger children accept as the normal thing, and only one or two could remember the days when they were able to buy candles without having to give up coupons.