WELCOME TO BRITAIN
SIR,—After crossing French, Belgian and Dutch borders during a short visit to the Continent with absolutely no fuss this is what my re-entry into England, which is now my home, 'was like:
The boat docked at Harwich at 7.30 a.m. and from then until ten minutes past eight we stood in a queue squeezed into a long dreary corridor, waiting to have our passports looked at and stamped. We were all aliens of course—mothers with bored, tired and eventually crying children, old women with many parcels and heavy suitcases which they had to pick up every time the line shuffled a few feet on; we were not human beings (some of us had had to sit up all night on the boat) but 'holders of alien passports.'
At eight o'clock I missed the train which my husband was meeting and about then I noticed a sign in five languages telling us that England wel- comed us most warmly. Standing finally in the room where the inquisitors sit behind their high little desks I watched for ten minutes while one of them grimly interrogated, a very young, pretty flustered girl over the details of her papers and got her to tit:. point of tears. A really old Polish woman with no English found that she had no 'landing card' and had to put down all her parcels and luggage and search through with trembling hands for a pencil with which to fill one out.
Then once stamped, one breezed through the baggage hall where I didn't sec a single bag opened. What does all this mean? What are the reasons for this sort of Customs set-up that makes coming into England, which is just about the pleasantest country 1 know, so unpleasant?
S. F. LATIMER
31 Cumberland Street, Woodbridge. Suffolk
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