A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ONE effect of the invasion is to lift the veil which has hidden from us the ordinary life of occupied France, and very interesting the first glimpse of the picture ought to be. But so far it is a very confused picture, made up in part of flabby contradictory evidence. The Daily Mail on Wednesday collected reports from several corre- spondents. The first, sufficiently arresting, told of two French girls, wives of German soldiers, who sniped from windows in a village at Allied soldiers, killing five of them before they were shot themselves. Another correspondent described the local population in the area he visited as variously enthusiastic, indifferent or sullenly hostile. An- other story, no doubt more typical, was of eager and valuable collaboration. But the strangest contradiction is between a Reuter's correspondent's stories of the comfort and even luxury he found in some Norman villages, with houses amply stocked with thick tweed suits, silk dresses, thick towels, cosmetics and abundance of excellent food—between that and the report of a French correspondent who, cabling to France, depicted the lot of the inhabitants in very different terms. They had got accustomed, he said, to their vie lente et dure, and he mentioned that, as measure of it, he had heard repeated again and again the exclamation " Just think of it, monsieur, fifty grammes of butter [less than 2 oz.] a month—in Normandy of all places." I feel this must be the true picture. The luxury houses sound German.
* * * * In considering conditions of employment after• the war a good deal of reliance has been placed on the demands of the civil aircraft industry. It may have been excessive reliance. One of the first authorities in the country recently made in private a remarkable assertion on that subject. Taking, he said, the number of first class and cabin passengers who crossed the Atlantic in an average year before the war ; assuming that that number would in future travel by air ; and assuming the initial provision of enough aeroplanes (1 don't know how many, but it cannot be high) to meet that need ; —the number it would be necessary to build after that to keep the fleet at full strength would be ten all told, say five provided by Britain and five by America. The basis of this calculation is, of course, hypothetical ; no doubt more people will cross the Atlantic by air than used to cross by sea, perhaps many more. But if the figures are accurate—and they have, as I say, distinguished authority behind them—they show how relatively insignificant the intake of new machines for civil air services -will be.
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America's affairs are America's affairs even in Great Britain, and it is not for Englishmen to pass judgement on military decisions, but I confess to being a little perturbed at what purports to be a verbatim report in last week's Tribune of a recent American court- martial. A negro soldier was charged with the rape of a white woman in an English village. The evidence cannot be adequately summarised here but it included some strange features. The man knocked at 11.2o p.m at the door of the house where the woman lived, and asked the way to the nearest town. She and her husband were in bed, but she, not the husband, went dawn. She invited the man in. talked to him for some minutes, actually went out with him— in the first instance about a hundred yards and then some way further—after which (so she alleged in court) the man produced a knife, held its point between her shoulders and compelled her to get over a low wall into a field and submit to his desires. The negro's defence was that he had consorted with the woman twice before for money, and it was suggested that on this occasion she only raised the cry of rape when she found her husband approaching to see what had become of her ; a doctor who saw her immediately after- wards said it was clear she had made no resistance. The negro swore he had never possessed a knife ; a black * sergeant and a black corporal testified that they had never seen him with a knife ; the civil police said that exhaustive search in the neighbourhood produced no sign of a knife. The negro admittedly signed a confession after prolonged examination by American investigators, but: he swore in court that it had not been read over to him and it did not correspond with what he had said. There is an obvious conflict of evidence— sufficient conflict to raise• grave misgivings about the sentence, which was that the negro be hanged by the neck till dead.
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I have received an invitation to an " Open-Air Concert . . . in the School Hall," the hall being that of an ancient and famous school. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but in fact it is all too intelligible in these days. The Vicar of St. Andrews, Plymouth (who, it is announced, is about to take the considerable leap from plain Rev. to Right Rev, on elevation to the see of Liverpool), has, I believe, been holding open-air services " in" the ancient parish church, in full keeping with the confident Resurgam which was inscribed above the main door of the church immediately after the blitz which destroyed all but the walls and tower. Mr. Martin is taking up one of the most difficult posts in the Anglican Church, and it is perhaps significant of the spirit in which he will approach his task that at Plymouth he has been conspicuously successful in drawing all denominations into spiritual unity and co-operation.
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I have been slightly studying the poet Campbell it propos of the centenary of his death, which fell this week. Commentators on him say that no one reads Gertrude of Wyoming nowadays, rather im- plying that no one could. But they can ; I have just done it. For the information of any who want to know what it is like, it is like this :
" And many a halcyon day he lived to see Unbroken but by one misfortune dire, When fate had reft his mutual heart—but she
Was gone—and Gertrude climbed a widowed father's knee." There is as much more of that as anyone could ask for.
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The proper medium in the Press for the poems a Poet Laureate writes on public questions is rather a nice question ; I daresay the editor of The Times has views on it—though whether The Times on the day had any passion for the productions of Mr. Pye may perhaps be doubted. Anyhow, the reason for these observations is the interesting fact that Mr. John Masefield's Invasion Day poem last week appeared in the Manchester Guardian and his United Nation's Day poem this week in the Daily Herald.
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Lord Burleigh's nod is historic, but it may be superseded by the affirmative gesture with which the Prime Minister on Wednesday responded to Mr. Will Thorne's question whether the black-out wa, likely to be abolished between now and Christmas.
Jaws.
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