LONDON’S MORALE

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21336, 6 February 1941, Page 4

LONDON’S MORALE

FAILURE OF BLITZ HOW LIFE GOES ON Among the many evidences of the dismal failure of the Nazi air blitz in its aim to intimidate Londoners comes to Auckland the two-sheet "saies-bulletin” of a London firm issued to country customers advising that business as usual is in progress. ] On the subject of the intention of 1 the air raids, me bulletin informs ! the firm’s country clients as follows: —"They want to stop us from travel- 1 ling to work or, if we do get there, !. to make working conditions impos- i sible by constant interruptions; to j make our women afraid to go out ! ■ shopping or send their children to j 1 school; so to disturb our nights that ; ] in the morning we won’t even have j ■ the will to work. This is where the i ■ blitz has signally failed. Travelling j ■ conditions have been difficult, but j ] the fact stands out that very few I. people are ever prevented reaching !. their places of work. . . . Even i j where the usual working premises j ; have been vacated for a safer re- |' treat, the work goes on in the place ' j of shelter. Our own office shelter j j is JUted up as a duplicate office so j , that when the warning goes we just ! i pack our work into cases and re- j i sume activities within a few minutes, i , “On the ‘home’ front, our wives 1 1 and mothers are no more intimi- j dated,” adds the bulletin. “Their ! main grouse is against the shop- ! : keepers who will shut their doors ! , when the siren sounds and stop the I important job of filling the shopping I baskets . . . As for the children, ] the writer has yet to come across I a child who was scared during a ’ raid; they are too much interested in technical arguments about Spitfires and Hurricanes and their col- i lections of shrapnel fragments ... i So, altogether, life is hard but not too unpleasant . . . There is no I question that the overwhelming majority of Londoners will go through hell sooner than see a single Nazi jackboot soil the streets ol their city.”