STIMULUS TO MORALE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21504, 8 September 1944, Page 4

STIMULUS TO MORALE

RESTORATION OF LIGHTS HOME GUARD DUTIES END (Special Correspondent.) fll a.m.) . LONDON, Sept. 7. “Everywhere you go to-day you can raise a. broad smile 1 or cheerful, gi m just by saying, ‘Great news, isn t it? The great news, of course, is not the advance on the battlefronts this time, but the lifting of the black-out regulations. Something like a full-throated cheer has gone up throughout the country at Mr. Morrison’s announcement for the black-out has been one of the most detested and disliked war regulations. The long, gloomy winter nights when rooms, heavily curtained, became Stuffy and when walking into a lamppost or pillarbox or tripping over a kerb was a normal hazard in the dark gloomy streets —these things will now be things of the past ana the effect is stimulating.. It means welcome relief for the civil defenceworkers and fire watchers whose routine, at times interrupted by moments ol hectic excitement, has chiefly been one long round of monotony. Equally popular is the relaxing of Home Guard duties and routine drills which have become irksome and when impatience has been growing with those who solemnly declared that the dangers of Britain being invaded had not yet passed. Mr. Nathaniel Gubbins, the- wellknown humorist, slimmed up the position when ho informed Sir James Grigg, Minister for War, recently that the Home Guards would stand no “Griggery pokery in the matter.” With the welcome relief from flying bombs and moaning sirens, together with the news about the black-out and the Home Guard, not forgetting the grand war news, there is a feeling of cheerfulness abroad that has been lacking for some long time.