ENGLAND’S STORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1940, Page 3

ENGLAND’S STORY

TOLD IN NEWSPAPERS NEWS IN ADVERTISEMENT. UNEDITED A.ND UNCENSORED ACCOUNT. The City Editors don’t know it, the Feature Editors have nothing to do with. it. the Art Editors never touch it, the 1 epoi ters, correspondents, and freelances take no hand in it. but day by day an illuminating commentary on conditions in Britain appears in the Pijess of the country, scarcely touched by censorship- and completely free from the prejudices of editorial policy, wrote the London correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor" recently. The Britain portrayed is in many ways the same solid expansive Britain of old, but the commentary leaves little room for doubt that it is also a land already feeling the beginnings of big economic and social changes. The unedited and uncensored story is written by the people of Britain themselves, although when they put-' their pens to paper all that they imagine they are doing is simply putting a small and private message in those long and closely printed columns of the weightier newspapers reserved for the insertion of such miniature advertisements.

These columns—still known wrongly and generically as "Agony Columns,’ from the times when they were mostly composed of urgent messages such as “D.J. Come back: All is forgiven.—George"—are something of a national institution. In "The Times" of London, the noble and expansive paper of tradition, they are accorded pride of place, taking the front page. In the “Daily Telegraph” and “Morning Post” they have only recently been relegated to the back, in favour of war news. In both they average the extraordinary total of 20 full-length columns or more a day, each column containing up to 60 separate notices. ALL SORTS OF OFFERS. Here is a kind of ceaselessly protracted home-made graph indexing the ups and downs of home life and of trade; housewives offer posts to domestic staff, out-of-work maidservants (if any) offer their services to mistresses; adventurers announce their willingness to undertake any mission, crime excepted; men with money to spare advertise for businesses to buy, men with businesses for sale seek customers with ready cash; firms on the up-grade appeal for men of talent, jobless personally announce their search for work.

The war has seen changes. Nowadays the fact that purely personal and private messages could very easily be employed by espionage agents means that these are subject to rigid official control, leaving the space free for’ small advertisements that tell their story more openly. Sometimes the story is dramatic, unfolding in a few simple words a tale that vividly records what even an “unreal war” means in terms of people’s existence. Glancing down the lengthy columns one suddenly strikes this message revealing another side to the oftreported evacuation’problem: “Two old spinsters, income pre-war derived from Students as Paying Guests and playing piano at Dancing Classes, Schools now evacuated and sisters left destitute.. Please Help until eligible for O.A.P. (Old Age Pension) (Case 168). The Treasurer. Distressed Gentlefolks Aid Association.” • AID FOR ARTISTIC TALENT.

The record of this changing society receives an interesting annotation, lower down the same page: “A well-known R.A. exhibitor paints cil portraits (lOgns) and miniatures (sgns) from any photo.—Particulars write. . A sign, to be sure, of the luxury-limiting times. It is to help persons like this advertiser that a Government commission in investigating how to "nationalist” artistic talent so that war may not. cut it off altogether from livelihood. The effect of the rise in prices is echoed in an advertisement which reads:— "Going up—going up—gent’s natty suitings, ironmongery, groceries. . . There's no doubt that men's clothes have gone up, are going up, and will go on going up—in price that is. . . , However, I still have a (diminishing) stock of pre-war cloth, and I intend as long as it lasts, to go on selling suits at pre-war prices. Bitt if you want to get one you’d better look sharp. . . On the other hand the personal ads. show there are plenty of folk with cash to spare: “A good plain cook wanted, aged between 30-40. Two in family. Four maids . . . .” writes one housewife, and the significance of this is not that experience would here seem! to have proved a good plain cook to be a better acquisition than a good pretty cook, but that here arc two persons typical of many others, as the hundreds of similar notices reveal, still with the cash to pay five other persons to look after them.

MONEY 70 INVEST. "I" reports another advertiser, ‘‘have clients willing to invest from £5OO to £20,000 in established businesses.” "Undergraduate seeks Skiers(s) join him ten days holiday French Alps . . . exit permits now granted (The sport-loving Englishman is as undeterred by permits and regulations as he is by prices, it seems;. Is the- British "export drive” a reality? The small ads. say yes. Under the column "Business Offers,” one finds, on one day, that five in eight notices refer to it. On the question of the "shortage of labour” jobless statistics and Government experts seem to be constantly at variance. Well, here's one notice which tells its own unprejudiced story. "Due to calling up of travellers, oldestablished manufacturers . . . find il impossible to make contact with their customers in England. Scotland and Wales, and seek co-operation with a firm employing representatives covering this area. . . Calling up has other effects, too. as witness the "Important London Publishers” who "want first-class publicity assistant" but make the most essential proviso that "He must be over thirty years of age. . . .” , To labour shortage is added the other wartime phenomenon of automobile excess. So small is the demand for automobiles that the advertisements offering to buy them have dwindled almost to nothing. The most prominent space in the Motor Cars, Vans, etc.. “Wanted” is more often than not given over nowadays to notices of this kind, in tone almost apologetic for referring to autos in these days. “We have been instructed to purchase a number of modern cars for the services. Blank and Co.” Journals with barter columns bear out the suggestion implied by the falling lists of automobiles and other motor vehicles for sale and wanted.