The Saving of St. Paul's

Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 4

The Saving of St. Paul's

SOME years ago it was discovered that St. Paul’s Cathedral, the supreme example of Sir Christopher Wren’s architecture, was endangered by a subsidence at the foundations; Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the weakness from spreading, and many months of skilled and anxious work were required before the noble church was pronounced to be out of danger. Last week a new peril threatened it from the skies. An immense bomb, powerful enough to destroy in a single moment the building that has been so carefully guarded through the centuries, buried itself deeply in the churchyard. The area was roped off, and London waited grimly for the explosion. But again there were men able and willing to save the church from destruction. The story of this heroic episode has been flashed around the world. It is now

known that a little band of Army engineers dug their way down to the buried missle, finding the monster at 27 feet below ground level. They handled it with a delicate skill, bringing it to the surface and placing it safely in a motor-lorry. Then a lieutenant of engineers, whose name should never be forgotten by Englishmen, drove the bomb through empty streets to Hackney Marshes, where it was allowed to explode harmlessly. These men worked in the very presence of death: they handled death itself, knowing that at any moment the blinding flash might come. For them there was no excitement of combat, no rush of the blood in a power dive through the skies, no chance of retreat or escape. They worked in cold blood, and their weapons were tools and chains and theix - own steady hands. There have been great deeds in this war, and the roll of heroes is growing. But the men who removed a bomb from the churchyard of St. Paul’s are surely among the bravest of them all. It cannot be known if St. Paul’s Cathedral will escape the further attentions of Hitler’s barbarians: the noble dome is a tempting mark fox’ those who come in a lust fox’ destruction. But the one thing they cannot destroy is the spirit of a nation which bred the men who have left a new legend in the precincts of the Cathedral. It is a spirit which is the guarantee of victory.