LIFE IN WAR-TIME
By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES
LIFE in war-time as in peace has its rhythms, alternating between the slow and monotonous and the swift and all too exciting. For a year all of us had seen the likelihood of this thing happening ; we had opportunities to practise our parts and prepare for a transition which, when it came, would give little time for improvisation. And then it happened. The change to a new sort of life was instantly apparent, though it was also evident that the transition was gradual and that it might be a long time before we had all sorted ourselves out and arrived at a new routine with its appropriate technique of living. The balloons went up instantly in London, sailing in the sky like yachts at a regatta —" Blossom " is the pet name of one of them, and it deserves it when the September sun is shining. Darkness descended upon us at night, secreting the little internal domestic brightness that was allowed us. The A.R.P. workers began to swarm busily in the streets, known by all sorts of distinguishing marks as well as by their pre-occupied appearance. Steel helmets appeared, women in uniform, police in strange guise. On all the main roads of the country there was an air of determined movement, monstrous vehicles streaming with stores and munitions towards military and civilian objectives. The roads of England became much like the roads in France behind the lines during what used to be known as the " Great War."
There began at once a sort of game of musical chairs. People got up and moved, uncertain where they would next sit, and as likely as not they would get up and sit down many times before they would be finally settled. First, there were the organised evacuees and their arrival among the inhabit- ants of the reception areas—but I will not now dilate upon that burning question about which everyone has his own decided opinion. There were also migrants from the danger zones who were not organised—people who had moved because they had no reason for remaining in London, or Coventry, or Hull, or whatever their town may have been, and wage-earners who had been transferred with the con- cerns for which they worked. Upon some towns outside London the immigrants descended in hordes, and in every village strange faces appeared, and the local store became a humming centre of business activity.
Since the war began I have lived now in London, now in the country, and then in London again, and have noted the difference between the ever-growing activity of the former and the changed activity of the latter. Of the normal in- habitants of London most are n•w already either doing some- thing rather different from what they usually do, or wondering what they will soon be doing. Some are in the army, some in A.R.P. work, some on Government jobs, some temporarily replacing those who have been displaced. There are luxury businesses which cannot maintain their full staffs, and their employees have sought other jobs. The cinemas and theatres from the first day were closed, though now plans are being made for re-opening in some districts for certain hours. For actors and actresses it seemed at first that their occupation was gone, and that they must turn to jobs for which they had no special training. Happily it has been quickly recognised that a country condemned to forgo entertainment would be in a sorry condition. The theatre in one form or another is to resume its life under war conditions ; its reorganisation for the entertainment of civilians is just as necessary as provision for entertaining the troops. Harley Street specialists are complaining that there is a slump in their particular kind of business, though before long there is likely to be plenty for them to do, but not at luxury prices. General practitioners and nurses are carrying on, and standing by, like the A.R.P., for extra work.
Whilst the great centres of population are being shorn of many of their activities, the shops and offices working at reduced pressure, the houses half filled, the streets no longer crowded, the country places are filling up and acquiring a sort of parochial cosmopolitanism. Local com- mittees are concerned with affairs of State, and A.R.P. officials are as those having high authority among their fellow citizens. Each small town and village is of necessity becoming more and more a self-dependent social unit, for the 'buses are few and far between, private cars will soon be on petrol rations, and journeys at night have ceased to be practicable over darkened roads. The universal blackness of the evenings in town and country alike has narrowed social life down to the household and immediate neighbours, so that we may soon expect to see the development of a small community sense, neighbours, once antipathetic, being compelled to consort with one another. Entertaining, in the ordinary sense, must become infrequent, though there will be more hospitality in other respects—in the sharing of a car, so that the petrol ration may go further, in pooling supplies of this or that kind of food, when food also is rationed, in lending the lawn-mower or borrowing a vacuum cleaner. It is obvious that luxurious display will become an offence against good manners, that gross over- eating will be a sort of theft, and that greedy use of any scarce commodity, including petrol, will be thought of as unpatriotic. Not that anyone will wish to garb himself in sack-cloth and ashes or live meagrely and dourly as an object lesson to his fellows. Nor will there be the same distinction between soldiers and civilians as there was in the last war. Today it is difficult to say who will be in the front line, and whether the most exposed persons will always be those in uniform, or others. Who, indeed, besides the men of the Expeditionary Force, will be the soldiers in this war ? Will they include these steel-helmeted police and A.R.P. workers ? Surely they may. Then what about doctors and nurses, who may or may not be working in danger areas— the munition-workers, in evacuation zones—the builders who may be laying sand-bags, the journalists on reporting work, actors and actresses, playing in theatres before troops or for that matter before civilians ? Where are we to draw the line ? This war is totalitarian both in the sense that all real work is war work and that it may obtrude its presence anywhere—though of course even a war-zone has its back areas—some troops in an army are always in greater safety than others. But the feeling, now general, that all civilians are a part of the nation at war, subject to its dangers and discipline, gives to everyone the reassurance that he is engaged on soldier's work so long as his work is useful work and he is working hard at it. There will be no room for class assumption, since it is only efficiency that counts, and real capacity to command that should give authority. Is it too much to assume, since there is a war to be won, that pansyism will be at a discount, the purely cynical will be pushed aside, that effectiveness, not officiousness, will be the order of the day, and that after our experience and recollection of the last War we shall refuse to admire that easy-going cheerio-ness which makes war an excuse for anything?
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