LONDON UNDER FIRE

Southland Times, Issue 24533, 6 September 1941, Page 9

LONDON UNDER FIRE

Diary of an American • Journalist A LONDON DIARY. By Quentin Reynolds. Angus and ■ Robertson, Sydney. Price 8/6. Quentin Reynolds’s ‘‘London Diary is a brilliant contribution to the journalism of the war. It was intended not for publication but for the entertainment of a private family circle in the United States—for “Pop and Marj and Con and Jim and Don.” I won't write about the significant things (Mr Reynolds told his father). I wont write any serious pieces . . I’ll write to you about people I know; how they react (including me); what they are eating and drinking . . I think these inconsequential things might all add up to something important.

They do add up to something important. They add up to the most vivid account that has yet been published of London’s ordeal by bombing. The two months during which Mr Reynolds kept his diary—October and November 1940 —were the worst of all.

I believe that the war was decided during the past 60 days (he writes on December 1). Hitler’s greatest weapon has always been terror. It worked In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland and Belgium. He unloosed his terror against England in the form of indiscriminate niglit bombing . . . But what happened? London yawned. Coventry got mad. Southampton chortled gleefully that most shipping had long since been diverted from her docks . . . Terror against the English is about as effective as a cream puff would be in a fight against Joe Louis.

The diary abounds in quotable pieces —pen pictures of King George, Lord Beaverbrook, Ernest Bevin; amusing stories of the “blitz”; ribald songs; untold tales of the R.A.F.; glimpses of London and the countryside. But through it all runs the story of mass courage and heroism which will form an imperishable part of English history. Mr Reynolds was profoundly stirred by what he saw. He learned to admire and to love the British people, and his postscript, written after a two months’ holiday in America, finds him hurrying back to share in the terror, the excitement and the fun of bombwracked London. His writing is a model of newspaper style, simple, direct, concise—and revealing.