WAR COMES TO THE MAN IN THE STREET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 12, 15 September 1939, Page 8

WAR COMES TO THE

MAN IN THE STREET

E wanted to know what the man in the street thought about all this war business. So we went out the day after war was declared and asked him. " What," we said, "does war mean to you?" And he looked down at his boots, up to the sky, round at his fellows, and he said: "War is just bloody." But we could not let him off as easily as that. We asked him a few more questions, and we found that, somehow, someone has run across his ideas of right and wrong. He does not quite know what he personally should do about it. He is not sure what he will be asked to do about it. Meanwhile he goes about his affairs trying to hide the shocking realisation that the clash of nations has really turned him inside out.

In A Bar "You would not know there is a war," said a bar-keep who spent August of 1914 at home in his London. But he seemed to suggest that he and all his customers were drinking their cool beer because it would have been foolish to do anything else, even if they did know very well indeed that there was a war on. " What," they seemed to ask, "is the use of getting excited about this?" "It’s terrible," said a waitress, sprightly like, in between rounds of pleasant backchat with a familiar customer. And, to someone else: "I don’t know what we'll do if there’s a sugar shortage." "We can drink beer." "But they need sugar for beer too, don’t they?" And the mistress of the cafe, doing her accounts in a quiet morning hour: "This cash never will balance." Digging Up Streets No matter which way we walk to work, there is always one particular City Council employee pulling up a paving stone. We thought he might confine his. observations to a statement that streets had been torn up and laid down again in spite of all the wars of man’s busy invention. But he said nothing so illuminating. "Me?" he queried. "T’d like to ---- that -." And if

readers can’t fill in the blanks we can at least add that his comment was pointed. The Housemaid The housemaid was making beds with her usual abandon. We could not be quite certain that the sheets

were laid with quite the same precision, or that the quilt had been folded on quite the same carefully intricate pattern, For Jane (not her real name, of course), had George on her mind. She was quite excited about George. Evidently George was. afraid his battery commander would forget George’s address. So. Jane was worried tdo. "Look," she said. "I’ve got.a letter to, post for him." A little later she fluttered off with it. And the rest, dear. curious ‘listeners, is a military secret; for by now they will have remembered the address, and it’s hard to say just what Jane thinks about that. The linen was not changed next day. But laundries are so unreliable, What the Refugee Said The alien, the refugee; what did he think about it all? He told us in his queer English that Germany was still his country. That he remembered Germany’s hills and forests, her Rhenish,,wines and Bavarian beers, as well as any exiled New Zealander would remember New Zealand’s lakes and tumbling rivers — the wheat growing golden in Canterbury fields, or the grass growing green for lazy .cows. But he said slowly and deliberately, like a man making up his mind to commit suicide, that he no longer loved his own people, that he thoroughly approved of the war, and that his toast to England’s victory. was no empty gesture of expediency. ‘Somehow we knew that he cared nothing for

any judgment upon him or his words. He had no hope before him. Nothing but tragedy behind him. He nourished a great hatred. Business Man Bothered The business man spent a long time saying nothing. We sympathised with him, He had a very unsatisfactory look in his eye. He tried to talk about diplomatic history and missed badly. Started what looked like being a tale of woe and checked himself unhappily. In the end we decided to let him down lightly. Now, we suppose, he is still sitting at his desk in hopeless perplexity. A Man In Blue We caught John, our policeman friend, properly on the hop. "John," we said: "What does war mean to you?" John looked very uncomfortable, as any policeman would who had not been asked this question before. "Well," he said, playing for time. "I dunno." And then: "It’s a pretty rotten business." "We think it’s grand," we said, hopefully. But John refused to be drawn. So we said: "John, your collar’s rumpled," although we knew that a policeman’s collar is so made that it simply cannot be rumpled. Said John: "It’s this damn war, you know." Albert the Caretaker We met the caretaker scrubbing the stairs of the old home at lunch time. " Albert," we commanded; "pay attention." Albert did. "What do you think of all this war business?" Albert was of one mind. "Why the .’ he said, "do you

broadcast the same news over the radio four times in the one afternoon?" We reproved Albert. After all, we suggested, the BBC could not be sure that the whole world was listening just when it suited Albert. "Well, get to Which is what Albert says to everything. "Scared Stiff" After lunch we came across a plain sort of bloke doing a sort of professional job. out*of my way!" Young, he was, and sort of handsome. "I’m sure," he told us, "that I’d be scared stiff if I had to fight. ’'d crack up." With him was a woman friend. "I think," she said, "that we'll get married soon." A Journalist's View Then, as we were wandering along, we met a fellow journalist. Ah, we thought — he works on a daily paper — we'll get something right from the fountain head, so to speak. He spoke briefly and pungently: He said: "This war is going to mean terrible misery of mind for everyone, But war was inevitable, and we cannot turn back. We have no quarrel with the German people themselves; ouf quarrel with them is that they have allowed themselves to be driven into this conflict by their leaders." Liftman Takes Us Up That seemed to be a fairly prevalent idea, but people said it in different ways. We went, for example, into an elevator, and from the ground to third floor, the liftman earnestly assured us that he wouldn’t trust himself to speak on the situation. However, he calmed down as we descended for the fourth time, and agreed that the war was a terrible thing. "Look at that ship torpedoed yesterday," he said. "Germany deliberately broke a treaty agreement when she did that. There’s nothing we can do but retaliate." The Fireman Was Heated We had a chat with a fireman, too, and he summed up the situation for us, after being continually vocal for about five

And To Women As Well

minutes, in four words, two of which are unprintable. "It's a " he said.

Taciturn Barber Heigh-ho, we yawned, it’s time for a cigarette. But the barber who came out from the back of the shop, where he had been shearing someone’s locks, to serve us, rather surprised us with his taciturnity. The hairdressing faculty is usually nothing if not loquacious. He glanced speculatively at a poster flaring with "Britain at War With Germany." "It’s a bad business, isn’t it?" he ventured. We could not disagree. Then: "Everybody is taking it calmly, don’t they ... aren't they ... isn’t it... ?" he said. We understood. "We knew what was coming," he said; "we were prepared." Printer and Storeman But everyone did not feel the same. We were talking to a printer in the familiar atmosphere of inks and paper, and he in-

formed us that he had been doing a spot of heavy thinking. Ruminatively he said: "Well, I did not expect war to come." Pause. Then aggressively: "I reckon Germany’s action was aimed really against England. This was the chance they have been waiting for ever since they made their first demands for colonies," he theorised. Somewhat similar views were held by a storeman and packer who stopped working to tell us very emphatically just what he thought of war with Germany. "I think there’s a lot of justification for Germany in her action against Poland," he said. "After all, the country is divided in two by the Polish Corridor, and if the people of Danzig want to be under German rule, why shouldn’t they be?" He also deplored the idea that anyone should regard the German people as identical with animals that eat out of a trough. "Them’s my sentiments," he concluded. "Oh, by the way, don’t print my name." Bad For Hotel Trade The house manager at a large city hotel gave us a worried look, and told us he didn’t know what to think; just knew that war was terrible, anyway. Over a drink he said gloomily: "I think it will last a long time." And when we asked how it affected the hotel business, he said that it would practically kill it. +. From a Flat A friend who works while others sleep, peered blearily over the sheets when we called at his flat, and when he’d finished maligning us for waking him up, he made the sage comment that "Germany had been working for a big war for a long time... even before Czechoslovakia confirmed the Fuehrer’s megalomania." Ten Words From A Typiste "You don’t think I am thrilled about it, do you?" said the typiste.