Watching Berliners During The Blockade

Grey River Argus, 2 September 1948, Page 8

Watching Berliners During The Blockade

(By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist). BERLIN, August 25.

From behind a shattered wall and a hill of rubble outside my hotel window this warm Sunday evening, I can hear a dance band playing. And l ean see, just to the right of an unscarred linden tree, tables set about a clean space in the ruins Waiters are moving among the tables bringing food and wine to people seated there. The food, I should guess, is scant and stringy. The wine and the music are warmer and softer. Attractive Berlin girls are dancing gently to American tunes which went out about the time of the Civil War. The violins scrape away at “When the Popies Bloom Again,” which is, so I am told, about the first thing Bing Crosby did after his voice broke. That puts it around Gettysburg. . Yet, as a symbol of happiness ma city almost ploughed under by R.A.F. bombs and Red Army artillery, the old tin pan alley opus sounds better than ever it did before. The girls’ light summer clothes are. ingeniously contrived out of any material they could find, and by comparison with the monotony of Manners ’Street, they prove again that art and inspiration will always be more effective than money and stocked shelves for producing femmine It is no secret that any frock this evening which looks more than an embroidered petticoat has had some contact with the black market, out no one cares. It is summer in Berlin the linden trees are green, the wine is good and the dancers are young. What matters, in these, excellent circumstances, if there is talk of a third world war starting half a mde up the street, and of seige and hunger. Watching these people salvage some sweetness from the dusty destruction in which they live, I considered the prospect as it would oe from a Wellington hotel window, about the same time. It being Sunday, I might see two trams, and some sad looking citizens mooning abfiut wondering what on earth to do with themselves. Even it if were Saturday, the big entertainment day of the week, what would they find in place of this pleasant little ’ dancing cafe. They might, of course, be allowed to eat an ice cream walking along the street, provided they did not obstruct the traffic, or become a public nuisance in so doing. For anything more to eat they would have to retire to some air proof hash foundry, slick perhaps m a brassy sort of way, where there was no telling whether the sun was shining or the trams outside were jammed in snowdrifts. In place of the linden tree there would be some nondescript nevergreens in a cracked P And would customers please vacate their seats as soon as convenient, and don’t get any ideas about whiling away a mellow hour with some good talk and a bottle of wine, like treacherous Europeans. But what would have become ol the kindly, attentive waiter bringing wine to the tables. In Wellington his place would be filled by an unfortunate police seirgeant, plodding round sniffing at glasses.. Here, among seared buildings and piled debris, I come to wonder whether, as our soldiers! purloined the haunting “Lili Marlene,” we might not learn from Berliners some of the delicacy of life which has been strong enough and good enough to rise above bdmbing, sacking, and a dreary future. Yet, after all, we New Zealanders have Social Security, and the Marine Parade at Napier. What more could we wish, indeed?.