IN ENGLAND NOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 333, 9 November 1945, Page 11

IN ENGLAND NOW

A FORMER member of "The Listener’ staff, Sydney Brookes (who frequently wrote for us under the pen-name of "Thid") was recently appointed as representative of the Australian Associated Press in London, where he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm when the war ended. In a letter to us the other day he gave this picture ‘of conditions in England as he sees them: "Tl ONDON, and the news that runs through the city, are at this time especially interesting. If my memories of New Zealand are still accurate, we do not even have any real perception of the

manners, and now, the miseries, of these Europeans. This country is settling down, in an angry and determined way, to put up with a hell of a lot, but across the water there is very little but tragedy and imminent death, disease, violence, for millions of people. Everything has broken down and the armies which fought the war have not been able to summon the particular qualities needed for administration among the chaos they have wrought. The mess and horror are too great for ordinary perception and, in fact, few here are still capable of assimilating the reality of other people’s sorrows. Even here there are all the signs of a near breakdown of social morality. Thieves, rogues, tricksters are thriving on all the shortages, tempers are short, courtesy scarce. The English are fighting their way back into some sort of security, but in a resentful, disappointed way. In any less stolid countries there would be’ revolutions-there are. Here, after the first excitements, there is gloomy admission that more must be borne before even the necessaries are available again. A hard decision, but 4 saving understanding of self-interest is carrying them through. Big business is satisfied to be controlled into exporting. Mr. Bevin has made it clear that we stand very much where Mr. Churchill left us; A and Cripps® remain the colourless prophets of gloom; nobody knows quite where he is; and England goes slowly’on, mystified by Molotov and bewaring of Byrnes." .