MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
NOW that foreign visitors are beginning one by one to creep back to London, it is interesting to observe the effect which our great city makes upon them after these atrocious years. I have met one or two who, having seen Berlin or Falaise, regard the destruction caused to London as nugatory or superficial. Others will contend that the vast size of the city and the care with which the sites have been cleared and the debris removed give the impres- sion of only incidental devastation, an impression which is not to be compared with that created by the piles of sodden stinking rubble which line some German streets. Others again, and particularly those who have not seen the effects of bombardment elsewhere, are horrified by the ruins which they observe around them. A Swedish journalist the other day, gazing from my window upon the remains of the Temple, kept on repeating, " But it is not to be believed! It is not to be believed! It must have been for you a terrible
experience! Was it, in fact, so very terrible? My mind switches back to the great days of the blitz, to nights when, watching from the Victoria Tower, I saw the whole East End ringed in flame, to mornings when the smell of burning stung the nostrils, and when charred bits of paper whirled with the autumn leaves or settled silently- upon the puddles. I can recall the drawn faces of those who, in the early morning, streamed up from the shelters, and the sound of shattered glass being swept by householders from the pavements. Pity and terror were there, of course, but there was also excitement, exhilaration, defiance. No—it is rather of the Vi that I think in terms of horror ; of the intent malevolence of that inhuman engine, of its arrow-like course which courage could not deflect nor ingenuity hamper, of the rattle of its rage and the dread menace of its sudden silence. I do not think that I was unduly frightened either of the blitz itself or of the Vz which followed ; but VI certainly made me terribly afraid. It -is fortunate indeed that the human memory, which is so retentive of personal humiliations or clumsiness, should rapidly obliterate our moments of acute terror or discomfort. * * * *
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