"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3289, 28 March 1917, Page 51

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page) THE WEEK-END. . January 22. - I spent several hours of corivaleseuce' the other day in going through a bundle of Witnesses* lately arrived, and in reading of the New Zealand summer was reassured that the sun is still in the heavens, and felt warm for the first time for months. How good it would be to lie on the tussock or the bracken and let the sunshine bake into one, warming fie.:h and bones! The ice-blasts of this winter make warmth an impossibility, for the English fasnion of " heating ". the houses from open grates means two-thirds of the dieat escaping;-'up the chimney, with the result that only those portions of the body near the fire are warmed, and away from it the 'rooms and passages are freezing. The American fashion of heating from a furnace, with the hot air pipes running all through the house, is the only way possible of keeping the houses warm during the long months of the English winter.

But, oh, for the sun and the long months of warmth under the Southern Cross! The grit and doggedness-, v and sti k-to-it-ivexeis of the Briton is doubtless the offspring of these iron month's, when three times the effort and determination is needed for mastery than on a summer's day, with Nature helping. I notice that a correspondent to the Ladies' page makes a suggestion that has also occurred /to myself—that is, of making a selection from my letters during the war, and publishing in book form. I thank mv unknown reader for his or her kind remarks, and Elizabeth also, who is to be congratulated upon a ladies' page which holds its own among pages of its kind of the present day. Reading it here, at a distance, is always enjoyable, for it represents the life and conditions of the community it represents with judgment, and avoids the over-sentimentality of the old-fashioned ladies' page, which was inclined to degenerate into an exchange of affectionate effusions between a section of the writers and readers. •Practical sentiment is the order of the hour ; our last faiih has been shattered by this war in words unaccompanied by deeds. That "feeling is. deep and still" has been proved by the matchless deeds of the Empire, its generosity of doing, its boundless giving of self. There was a frightful outcry bv the Victorian women (and men) against the New Woman, who was born of education and experience. She was predicted as the ruin of the nation. And she has been—what she always knew she would be, given

the chance— a saviour of the finest qualities of the race. England could not have played the part vji the war that she has doen but for the women, nor can Britain "cany on" without the women's main tained efforts. So those loafers and shirkers whose duty it is to fight for the Empire's freedom, and who shelter behind the valour of other men, are sheltering behind the women's petticoats, too. They get a rough time "of it this side of. the world, for unless honourably exempted the women worth while won't be seen in their company. As one scans the growing honours lists one's heart goes out in sympathy to those proud jpomen of-New Zealand whose sons and .iSrbthers and friends- they were. Yet apart from this and your generous activities, you scarcely seem to realise the war. Distance and circumstances have placed you outside the oppression of its horrors. The New Zealand newspapers read here like reports of a world outside the great turmoil of the war. Despite the ample war news and lists of killed and wounded and pages., of photographs ,of the fine fellows who left home and peace to do their honourable and honoured part in the thick of the fight, there is a sense that the war is not yours, is outside your lives as lived from day to day, something more belonging to Britain than New Zealand. The reports of the race meetings, the look of interest and happiness on the faces of the people, the -hockey matches, tennis dances, y and afternoon teas are like echoes from a happy, remembered long-ago, where there is laughter and pleasure and a million homes untouched by the red horror that is saturating Europe and tinging the waves that wash Britain's shores. > There is still space in the newspapers and interest for readers in the studies of birds and beasts and the conditions of countries hundreds of years ago. Happy land !. where personal desires and moods and tastes may still receive consideration ; and the children, as judged by their letters, are very young and untroubled, and take the joy of life as their natural heritage. The echoes of normal life' will never sound through Europe again till the arch-hypocrite, shedding, crocodile tears for peace, has his fangs drawn. Not a district, not a backwoods, not a township in the Dominion that has sent a brave boy to. his hurting or his death; and there is scarce a corner of New Zealand that has not but is living the prayer, "Give peace in our time, O Lord"—for peace means, first, destruction of the evil thing that had the power and the will to trample on the defenceless, and perpetrate vileness and cruelty to gain its ends. The men who danced the goosedance through, burning cities and devastated villages, .gloating over the murdered old men and women and children, and the intolerable wrongs of young maidens, weep with pity now for themselves that their coffers and barns are emptying, and their hopes of world-dominion vanished. They threaten, unless we humbly submit, more horrors of frightfulness. But what resources of frightfulness have they left? What atrocities untried? In the hour of their own peril they have discovered the blessings of the peace they shamelessly violated with the pledges they gave to Belgium. What resources of frightfulness have they left? They have murdered prisoners and killed and drowned unarmed men and women and children, and at them in dying; they have bombarded, defenceless towns and killed the babies in their cots; they have poisoned wells and mutilated and starved and tortured their victims; and now their professors are beseeching the Kaiser to be "frightful" if we ignore his Pecksniffian tears! More men will fight and die on land and sea to make' good the work of those who have gone before, more homes will be made desolate, move women and children wall be bombed and drowned and habitations wrecked, more misery and hardship will be piled on the mountain of woe already reared; but England and England's Empire answers, "No" to a peace that would give the p.eaceTbreaker of Europe the victory and leave him laughing in his sleeve and ■planning the next war. Let him, reap what he has sown. And so these difficult days ! While the Kaiser's Njheart dwells day and night (so he says) on the horrors of the battlefield, and bleeds for them! At his failure of world dominance rather. Why we weep is always worth inquiry. There are those who are dry-eyed for the woes of others but who weep copiously for self, and the spectacle of the man who treacherously drew the sword on his friends, weeping for their sorrows, leaves one sceptical and unmoved. It is the Kaiser's own shoe that pinches. The week-end " in England has been horrified by the most terrible catastrophe that has befallen since the war in the fire and explosion of a high explosive factory on the river east of" London, news of which would reach you by cable. The cause of the fire will doubtless remain a mystery, but incredible as it may appear, there are almost daily cases before the courts of fine and imprisonment of munition workers, men and Avomen who break the laws forbidding matches to be taken upon the. premises. The workers secrete the matches upon their person for the purpose of secret smoking, putting their own lives and the lives of thousands of others in jeopardy; but whether this was the cause of this fire or not is not known. So terrific was the explosion that it shook all London, and was felt 96 miles away, andf shattered not only the factory where it] occurred to atoms, but houses and streets in the vicinity, more awful, more frightful, and more destructive than any Zeppelin visitation to these shores. It w r as in the early hours of Fridav evening that the whole of London and the suburbs for 12 miles around were startled by the terrific explosion, the like of which, say soldiers back from the war, nothing has been heard at-the front. People were lifted off their feet, and others thrown into the air by the concussion; buildings fell, and for miles around windows were broken. In Piccadilly and other centres of the metropolis the first indication that something unusual was occurring was. a great flare

of fire in the sky, which threw the dome of St. Paul's into vivid relief. The thought in the minds of many was that it wa* another Zeppelin being brought down in flame over the river south-east of London. People hurrying home through the cold . and gloom stopped to watch, the..red sky. Then came the explosion that shook the ground like an earthquake. Windows fell m showers of glass, doors were wrenched from their hinges, and nearer to the scene of the explosion children were thrown from their beds, and streets- of houses toppled down like houses built of cards. At Bow, East Ham, Poplar, and surrounding districts, doors were torn off their hinges, chimneys fell, and windows were broken in hundreds; while as far away as Harrow (16 miles away) windows rattled violently. At Brixton, Acton, Wellesdon,' Kingston, Surbiton, Wandsworth, and many other outlying districts, buildings were badly shaken. All over South and West London the explosion caused great alarm. The big window of Lloyd's Bank,. in Kings way, was blown out. The factory was situated in. that area of. the docks which is thick with factories and near the river. The munition works, flourmills, and various other factories were in a group, and but for the fact that Friday evening is pay night, and it is the custom to leave off work as early as 5.30 or 6 o'clock, thousands who had got safely away would have been inevitable victims. The exception, was the flourmills, where they were still working. The streets adjacent to ' the factories wejje all of one class of workmen's cottages, two stories high, among which terrible havoc has been wrought, and from which, among appalling disaster, there have been some ", miraculous escapes. A baby was blown through a window into the arms of a man in the street, unhurt. At the explosive factory itself the majority of the people had left, but there remained the laboratory staff, the office^staff, and a small number of people near the explosive store. Dr Andres Angel, the chief chemist, who was. in charge of thjg**works, was in his ,-■ office when a small explosion was heard in the top story of the explosives store. No one knows what was the cause of. t&o • explosion, but everybody on the premises knew the danger, but "instead of panic there were deeds of great heroism. Dr Andres Angel warned everybody off, but he himself stayed with others who considered it their duty to stay and. combat the fire before it reached < the chief explosives stores. But efforts were vain ; . and . 10 miiyites later De. Angel was a victim to'his heroic efforts. Dr Angel was an. , Oxford man, of Christchurch, where he took' his degrees in 1599, and shortly after the outbreak of war he offered, his services to the Government in connection with the manufacture of explosives, and gave his life for .his country as nobly as any on the field, for he. faced a certain and horrible death to remain at his post. The stories told are heartrending, and the loss and sorrow piled upon sonie seem too great for human endurance, shaming the fretful pining of those who have lesser; troubles to bear. One poor woman, who had that morning received the news from the front that' her husband was killed, lost all her six\children in the evening. The munitions factory was literally blown into fragments. Great quantities of iron were hurled in all directions, the great boilers and sheets of iron falling at a distance. The masses % of ; wreckage covered six acres. Masses of ..burning stuff; fell in all directions, and Bet -other factories and the flourmills. on fire. The Red Gross ambulances were quickly on the scene. For two days soldiers have been digging among the debris for bodies. As yet only about 100 have been recovered, and it seems almost a hopeless task to remove the tons- of earth and stone that must ba removed in tb« search. Several of the workmen employed by the 'firm declare the explosion to be. devil's work of German agents, affirming that a man of German birth was among the employees. ■ '.' The week has been filled with war matters. All classes of society seem to be making a very real effort to meet the de- ; mands that daily grow more urgent and insistent. A little while ago one heard from women who were reluctant to exchange ease for work complaining of the difficulty of placing themselves; but one knows how urgently women are wanted, and find a difficulty in believing otherwise. The need for canteen workers in factories and at railway stations is great, and an application meets with an immediate response. The Red Cross nurses must be passed; but there are plenty of classes. Munition workers must now bo trained; but the London County Council ■ has free training classes for these. One does not see much of their friends these dreary war-winter days; they are all so much occupied, if with nothing else, with* household affairs, for the servant question is one which thousands have given up trying to solve, and are doing the work themselves —closing as many rooms of the house as possible and economising in fuel and lights. Economy has got past the amusement - stage- " The parsimonious pounced upon the first mention of war economy, and under the cloak of patriotism practised private meanness. Some took it up as a fad, and to save a cutlet used three or four eggs at 4d to 6d each, ot- otherwise followed some of the ridiculous "economy" recipes given in the newspapers. Very few seemed to realise at first the reaJ urgency of economy —outside that class that are compelled to ■ practise it most of their lives: but the need has been brought home by the high prices and scarcity, and the efforts will be on a gigantic scale for growing food. Almost every private garden will bo utilised, in part if not wholly, for the growing of vegetables, for a lean year is facing us.