"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 56

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.)

LONDON REVISITED (Continued.)

I concluded my last letter with the remark that a raid was expected that night. A young flying officer ran in to see his mother before he started "somewhere"— we know now that it was to help in the great barrage fire that poured forth to meet 'he enemy air-fleet that attacked London a few hours later. "We ars trying something new," casually remarked the airman. "If it succeeds—" He smiled as though he thought it would. "If it doesn't succeed —" He shrugged his shoulders. The shrug, however, did not "deter us from using tickets for the Haymarket Theatre; nor did the possibility of the arrival of the Huns overhead keep the people fear-bound at home, though hundreds of thousands were homeward bound as usual at this hour from offices, etc.,, as we went cityward.-Again I was struck by the magnitude of the crowds which people the wonderful metropolis, and at the distances travelled from one point to another. The District and Underground and tube railway stations were all thronged. At every stoppage hundreds jumped aboard or jumped off N and mingling with the crowds the khaki boys, with their kit bags and knapsacks. As we approached ..Victoria station the throngs grew denser, and- as our train paused I saw that the stairways and bridges and platforms were massed with people. The Red Cross trains were due, and other trains were leaving for France. The women, with pale faces and anxious eyes, were crowded at the barriers, waiting the incoming trains and the wounded soldiers. Whatever London was in the first year of the war, it is a war-London to-day. Not elated, not curious, as in the first days of enthusiasm, but everyone seems self-possessed and busy, going about their business energetically and < quietly, with scarce a glance at the great rama spread out before them. It is a world of moving pictures, a hundred tragedies, a hundred dramas, a hundred romances are being enacted at every yard. In 2000 miles of streets 6,000,000 human beings make the passing scenes, and there is nothing new under London's sun —our doings have been done, our words spoken, our dreams dreamed. And yet there are new aspects of this mighty passing .show. London- has always been famous for its beautiful . women, but at the present moment the numbers of beautiful girls to be seen everywhere in the trains and buses and streets is remarkable. It is doubtless due to the fact that the upper-middle and middle class women are at war work, and out and about, unchaperoned, at their business like their brothers used to' be. Sport and hygenics have been working wonders with the girl of to-day, and called from the tennis court and the hockey field to release the men from the ofFie and shop, and to supply them with ammunition they are scattered broadcast, and cheer the heart and gladden the eyes to behold. Bright-eyed and bright-haired, and lithe of limb, their natural males are those fine fellows in khaki, and not the weaklings and narrow-chested young men in civilian clothes, who look apologetic for their existence just now. - But there is another class of men becoming pathetically familiar in the streets—the young man who is maimed and discharged from the army. You see him. on crutches, or with his arm in a sling, or being led. his hand on a friend's arm—blind.

There seems to haye sprung up a new consideration, one for the other, and the tired girls returning from their hard day's work offer their seats in the crowded tains to elderly women and old men, as their brothers used to do. Without being "mannish," these war-working girls make no conscious appeal of sex and youth. They "look after" themselves, and the men who have daughters of a similar age, working, seem to .extend to them a

I fatherly understanding which is protective I in itself. When my friend and I reached the Hayj market on the night of the first of the I "Harvest Moon" series of air raids, it i was about 8 o'clock—the performance was ! advertised for 8.30. It was a still night j after a clay of Indian summer—an ideal I night for a raid. The moon, at half, | hung, in a black-blue, star-studded sky, ! under which the mighty metropolis dozed with half-shut eyes. Dozed, but watched. It was a shadow-city of spires and temples, a mystery city of unlit distances. We had been seated in the theatre but a few minutes when the manager came into the stalls. I noted that even in the stalls and boxes the women were not wearing evening dress, but had merely removed their hats and wore dressy blouses with their walking skirts, taking, off their coats in an informal manner. Every man whose hair %as not grey—and some whose hair was grey—wore khaki. Three young New Zealand officers sat on my left, and I quite intended speaking with them but for what followed. The manager was passing quietly from one group to another, saying something. "He's announcing a raid," I said to my friend, to which' she replied, "Don't say it!" The manager he said quietly, "that the 'Take Cover' notices are out. The performance will be delayed, but you will, I think, be as safe here as—anywhere. But, if you prefer it>. there _is the vestibule and the basement. Permit me to advise you not to go into the street." I turned to say something to our Dominion boys, but they had gone into the open. The theatre was full, for "General Post" is a war play, and sweet with human feeling and patriotism." The "gods" in the gallery under the roof were chiefly munition and other war workers, with their khaki and sailor boys; the dress circle, and pit, and stalls were full, and the boxes had a sprinkling. , The manager came before the curtain, rather pale, perhaps, for the effect of his announcement on the house; and repeated what he had said in the stalls. He must have been reassured, for the house did not turn a hair. The audience quietly talked, while the orchestra softly played. It was by first experience of a London theatre in a raid, although my air-raid experiences have been varied and quite three- : score. • '" * "■»''.

The orchestra -played softly and the audience applauded, but, as the battle in the air approached nearer and,guns fired and the. theatre trembled with the explosion of falling bombs, the orchestra tuned up louder, the applause was louder, the musicians and the music-lovers were determined to die—if death should chance —in harmony. That theatre was only typical of every other London audience that night. ' Everybody knew the danger; nobody could say that certainly they were safe, but I think, and without exaggeration, that everyone was determined to die rather than yield to an unworthy foe. In the vestibule, where about a hundred people were assembled, the ladies quietly smoked their cigarettes or sipped tea, while the men stood about talking. . A young officer rushed in and said to an old colonel, "They are just above us, sir." And to drown his rather loud remark the colonel shouted (the guns were roaring), "Gad, sir, the ladies are plucky!" Then came that —to those who have heard it—unmistakable thud; the building shuddered : a bomb had exploded near by—as it proved, very near by.

I wanted to see the crowd of air-raid refugees in the tube stations. There was a station a few minutes' walk away from the Haymarket, but directly the hour of danger passed the curtain went up, and Madge t Titheradge, Lilian Braithwaite, George Tully, and Norman M'Kinnel made one forget the previous hour. In the first interval my friend and I went across to the tube station. It was densly packed. "All clear —pass along!" called the policemen. There were hundreds of children of all ages, and hundreds of mothers not so very much older than s the children, whose fathers were at the front; and there were hundreds of old women and men. But the stray young men there—there was not a khaki among them —wore a slinking, fortive air, and most of them were aliens—mean little nondescripts whose heads did but reach the women's shoulders, and sometimes they carried a child as a shield from contempt. But the children! Never shall I forget the hunted, frightened look in the eyes of the children, many of whom can remember nothing of this beautiful world except their khaki daddy—gone—and trouble generally. These children with the frightened eyes were not crying, were not making any demonstration at all. "Pass out there" ; and they went, with their mothers, back to their tenements. The streets had been deserted at the "take cover" signal, and till the "all clear" notice was given the majority of people did not desert their shelter. A bomb dropped in front of a large hotel in Southampton row, killing four men who were standing in the doorway of the vestibule. Trams stopped running, lights went out, and the railway stations were in darkness;. women had snatched up their babies in blankets and shawls and

run for cover, swarming clown to the underground. As wo returned to the theatre the people were beginning to come out again. The play was an hour delayed; hut so good was it that it. was worth waiting for, and, with few exceptions, the audience had waited, and the performers gave no sign of the hour of danger past. We caught the last train running to Richmond (Chiswick is near), and it ran with almost empty carriages; the platforms were deserted; the moon had set, and at our journey's end we had the shadowy, tree-lined road to ourselves. Not a house showed a light. ! The following evening the raid on London was repeated. Many of the theatres had announced that there would be no evening performance till the moonlight nights were over and London had calmly made its preparations, and assistants were dismissed at an early hour that the girls might be under the protection of their own people. , We were dining that evening with friends at Stoke Newington. .The North and North-east district of London is the way of approach for the Hun raiders to the city, and a very hot corner of the metropolis. We found our friends in a state of preparation; the cellar had been fitted up \vith garden seats and mats, and no sooner had we dined than the booming_ of the anti-aircraft guns and the shrieking of shrapnel above our heads sent the party, headed by our hostess, below stairs. A wise precaution, of course; but, personally, I found it uninteresting and cold. We spent the whole evening between the drawing room and the cellar —mostly in the cellar; and when the "all clear" signal was given found that the buses had stopped running, and th«# was a difficulty about getting home. By a lucky chance we met with a motor bus that had been stuck up, and was now returning to Oxford Circus, from wbere we caught another belated .bus to Chiswick. That midnight rida through the deserted streets was like passing through an abandoned i city. All was still and quiet as I have never known London to be, where before the war there was no night. No taxis were on the stands,' only an odd foot passenger was on the sideways, and the footsteps of policemen echoed down the street. The lights had been extinguished; but the towers and turrets and a million dark roofs stood out against the silvery sky, the shadowy trees of the parks that had stood sentinel through centuries did not stir a leaf in the windless air. And one realised how beautiful London is with its abbeys and cathedrals and palaces; how wide its streets; how brave and true and loyal the millions now sleeping quietly behind the closed doors! It was a night for lovers, for poetry, and for inspiration, and in the silent hospitals were men and women and little, children ■ crushed and mangled and murdered by the Huns. "They will never frighten the women of England to. fail their country," said the woman by my side. "They may kill us and our children and break our hearts; . but we shall never give in. Never."